Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 50 (4) 2022   doi:10.17746/1563-0110.2022.50.4.129-136

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Aborigines or Migrants? A New Stage in the Okunev Origin Debate

A.G. Kozintsev

Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences, Universitetskaya nab. 3, St. Petersburg, 199034, Russia

New arguments put forward by advocates of the migration theory of the Okunev origin are discussed and found unconvincing. A cultural impulse from the Late Yamnaya and Yamnaya-Catacomb populations of the northeast Caucasian steppes is quite probable; in fact, a migration is possible too, but not on a mass scale. The western pulse was single and limited in size, and its effect on Okunev origin was likewise limited. Eventually, it was overlaid by a much more powerful local tradition—a fact that is supported by both craniometry and genetics. The belief that “brachycranic Caucasoid males”—alleged militant migrants from the west—played a critical part in Okunev origins is erroneous. Even if it proves possible to single out such males among the newly discovered skeletons from burials of the early, Uybat, stage (thus far, such attempts have been unsuccessful), their contribution to the Okunev gene pool was much smaller than that of the autochthonous population of South Siberia. According to A.V Gromov and other members of the Saint-Petersburg school of cranial nonmetric studies, new crania from the Uybat burials don’t reveal the “Native American” tendency peculiar to other Okunev samples and to certain other ancient groups of South Siberia. This is especially evident in the frequency of infraorbital pattern type II. However, no inequality is observed either in the number of Uybat males and females or in the distribution of nonmetric traits between them, disproving the idea of a military campaign allegedly causing a population turnover whereby, as migrationists claim, Afanasyevo people were destroyed or displaced. Genetics provides no indication that the source of the western admixture in Okunev people was some post-Afanasyevo migrant group from the western steppes rather than Afanasyevans themselves. This idea is more plausible with regard to the Chaa-Khol people of Tuva.

Keywords: South Siberia, Okunev culture, Yamnaya culture, Catacomb culture, migrations, relict populations