Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 53 (4) 2025   doi:10.17746/1563-0110.2025.53.4.092-100

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An Early Metal Age Burial in Treugolnaya Cave, Primorye:
A Multidisciplinary Study

N.A. Kluyev¹, I.Y. Sleptsov1, A.V. Zubova², V.G. Moiseyev², D.V. Pozdnyakov³, K.V. Zhur⁴, M.V. Leonova⁴, F.S. Sharko⁴, E.B. Prokhorchuk⁴, M.P. Tiunov⁵, and V.E. Omelko⁵

¹Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography of the Peoples of the Far East, Far Eastern Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pushkinskaya 89, Vladivostok, 690001, Russia

²Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences, Universitetskaya nab. 3, St. Petersburg, 199034, Russia

³Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pr. Akademika Lavrentieva 17, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia

⁴Federal Research Centre “Fundamentals of Biotechnology”, Skryabin Institute of Bioengineering, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pr. 60-letiya Oktyabrya 7, bldg. 1, Moscow, 117312, Russia

⁵Federal Scientific Center of the East Asia Terrestrial Biodiversity, Far Eastern Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pr. 100-letiya Vladivostoka 159/1, Vladivostok, 690022, Russia

The article outlines the findings of a multidisciplinary study of an Early Metal Age burial of a woman in Treugolnaya Cave, Primorye—the first such burial in the region. The human skeleton was accompanied by funerary goods including stone and bone artifacts and ceramics. The most noteworthy specimen among the lithics is a polished knife, very similar to those from the late 2nd to early 1st millennia BC sites in Primorye. DNA analysis showed that the individual was a female member of a Mongoloid population. Her morphological features indicate an age of more than 50 years and a stature of ~153 cm. Her elongated cranium reveals an antemortem deformation. The comparative analysis suggests that the closest morphological parallel was a cranium from Rodinka II, Yakutia, associated with the Belkachi Neolithic culture. The paleogenetic analysis suggests that the most similar paleogenomes are those from China, Mongolia, and the Russian Far East. Two of the latter are Neolithic ones from Primorye (Chertovy Vorota and Boismana-2). We conclude that genetic continuity in this region was high during the Holocene. A more detailed analysis of population affinities is ongoing. A facial reconstruction was carried out. Radiocarbon dating suggests that the burial in Treugolnaya Cave dates to the late 12th-11th centuries BC.

Keywords: Primorye, Treugolnaya Cave, Early Metal Age, anthropological analysis, paleogenetic analysis, facial reconstruction