Individual from the kurgan burial of the XII century in the Middle Oka — experience of complex archaeological and genetic research

Abstract

For the first time, this paper presents a complex study of the burial of the ancient Russian woman from the classic “Vyatich” mound from the Kremenyie burial site (Moscow region). The mounds and synchronized ground cremation burials are combined at this unique 12th-century burial site. The aim of this research is to examine the historical details of the person from the mound using conventional archaeological, anthropological, and archae-oparasitology methodologies along with modern paleogenetics methods. The burial site is characterized by a general “archaic” rite, manifested in the late preservation of the cremation rite along with the burial. According to anthropological data, an elderly woman, over forty, was buried there. She was identified as a member of the local population by radiogenic strontium isotope (87Sr/86Sr) study. Rich grave content and the fact that the body was buried in the middle of the mound indicate the woman's high social standing in the community. According to ar-chaeoparasitological data, the eating habits of the woman appear to be characterized by the consumption of un-cooked or insufficiently thermally prepared freshwater fish. The complete mtDNA sequence reconstruction indi-cates that it belongs to haplogroup V1a1, one of the Western Eurasian haplogroup V branches. To date, this represents the first case of the V1a1 mitogroup being found in the Russian Plain during ancient times. A repre-sentative of the Danish Viking clan from the Oxford burial site of the XI century was the closest of the ancient samples to the mtDNA of the studied woman, which indicates a genetic relationship on the maternal lineage with the medieval Northwestern European population. Single nucleotide substitution A7299G in the mitogenome of the woman clusters her with present-day Russians from the Belgorod and Pskov regions and shows the continuity of the modern Russian population with the Ancient Russians. Thus, the results of our study demonstrate the private details of the individual as common historical features, which include the ceremonial side of burial and belonging to the maternal genetic lineage preserved in the modern gene pool of the Russian population.