МАЭ № 6080-19

Late Bronze – Early Iron Age woman from Kharachoy, Chechnya, northern Caucasus

1945, 1947 (casting)

plaster

The cemetery near Kharachoy in the Khulkhulau River gorge, dating to the first centuries of the 1st millennium BC, was excavated by A.P. Kruglov in 1937. On its basis, a distinct culture of Dagestan and eastern Chechnya dating to Late Bronze – Early Iron transition was described: Kayakent-Kharachoy. Deceased people were buried in stone cists in a sitting or flexed position. By all appearances, they were ancestors of the modern inhabitants of that region. The aged woman from Kharachoy, whose appearance Gerasimov reconstructed, is a typical representative of the highland people of northeastern Caucasus. Her physical type is Caucasoid, with a well profiled dace and sharply protruding nose. The elaborate headgear and clothing replicate modern prototypes, but certain elements were suggested by artifacts found in the graves.

Anthropological plastic reconstructions, lifetime masks. 19th - 20th centuries