Dr. T. Tóth szerk.: Studia historico-anthropologica (Anthropologia Hungarica 21. Budapest, 1990)

in the cemetery. A further 45, altogether 48 dead infanta should have been present in the cemetery if the number of 0-year-old individuals was reconstructed according to the 5th level of the Eastern type mortality model of COALE & DEMÉNY (1964) (there the life expectancy at birth is 28.6 years). b/ The number of women exceeds that of men by 42% among the adults. This rate may be explained by the fact that much more women died between 15 and 24 years than expected. In an exogamous marriage system women who died due to perinatal diseases, were soon replaced by others. This way the sex ratio of the living population should be in balance, while at the same time the ratio of the women buried in the cemetery was disproportionally raised. METRIC AND MORPHOLOGICAL FEATURES The parameters of measurements and indices of the female and male skulls can be read in Tables 4 and 5, while those of the skeletal bones in Table 6. There is no significant discrepancy between the two sexes regarding their mixture according to the standard deviation values. The average standard deviation of 38 skull measurements of males is 7.56, that of females is 6.61. The average standard deviation of 56 skeletal measurements is 8.69 in case of males, 7.05 in case of females. A greater than 1% standard deviation of significance was found with the greatest width (M 8) and skull index (M 8:1) of males and with the skull index of females. The majority of the 13 length measurements of the skull fell within the 'medium' range with both sexes. The 'long' class contained only the neurocranium, the base of the skull, the maxilla, the palate and the jaw of males and only the palate of females. The majority of the 13 width measurements of the skull belonged to the 'wide' range with males, and to the 'medium' class with females. Most of the 6 height measurements fell within the 'medium' class with both sexes. 'Low' average value was found mostly on the uoper face with both sexes. Accordingly, the skulls of the Baéko Petrovo Selo population belong to the medium and long, medium and wide, medium and low categories, as far as the measurements are concerned. The cranium is medium long and low (mesocran, chamaecran), the upper face is wide and low (euryen, chamaekonch) according to the indices. The body height, calculated according to PEARSON'S method, was 'medium' in average with both sexes, though there is a high stature male group, too. The morphological features of skulls are given in Table 7. Starting from the sexes it can be said that the majority of the examined 13 features show either identical frequency, or such a discrepancy which is a natural indication of sexual dimorphism. The only thing worth mentioning is the greater frequency of alveolar prognatism with females, which may reveal taxonomic differences of the two sexes. The anomalies of some non-metric features of the skeleton are displayed in Table 8. We may add that the frequency of sutura metopica is 7.7% (2/26) with children above 2 years, and it is 7.1% (6/84) compared to the whole of the population. It can also be read from the table that the examined features of the humerus and the femur are more frequent on the left side, as revealed by the combined values of the two sexes. Furthermore the material contained os incae bi- or tripartitum, os bregmaticum, os japonicum, condylus tertius stem, torus mandibularis, 13 dorsal and 4 lumbal vertebrae. Special attention is to be given to the extremely high frequency of spondylolysis in the population of Backo Petrovo Selo. As it has already been described in details, I would like to present only its frequency in 4th to 17th century series published since that time in East Central Europe (ERY 1974). The frequency of the anomaly in Baéko Petrovo Selo held its first place even when compared to 17 other series, as it can be seen in Table 9. The sexual divergence of the anomaly is the only difference from the material known till 1974. Namely, spondylolysis is more frequent with females than with males in the majority of the analyzed series. The causes of spondylolysis are manifold. The Backo Petrovo Selo material seems to support that the greater loading of the vertebrae is one of them. This population belonged to the first two generations of the mounted nomadic Avar population arriving in the Carpathian Basin from the East. Consequently, riding must have played an important role in their way of life.