Szekessy Vilmos (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 59. (Budapest 1967)

Éry, K.: An anthropological study of the Late Avar Period population of Ártánd

morphological, characters show the traces of both dolichocranial and brachycranial elements. It seems also very probable that in the evolvement of the peculiar Ártánd character the process of brachycephalisation also had its role to play. In the character-complex of the Europoide Ártánd females, there is a brachycranial type element observable which stands nearest to the Pamirian or the CentralAsian-intrafluvial type, respectively. * Let us examine finally, from the standpoint of similarity, the relation of the Ártánd population to some series of diverse ages from the Central Danubian Basin and the Soviet Union, in the hope of eventually finding some suggestion for its ethnogenesis. Of the cemeteries from the Central Danubian Basin, I have selected one series from the Sarmatian Period, ten from the Avar Period, one Slavic from the ninth century, and ten from the Árpádian Age. Of the Avar Period series, only those with a preponderantly Europoide composition had been compared the Ártánd population. The 35 series from the Soviet Union had been selected with an eye to their origin from areas which might come into consideration for the ethnogenesis of the Avars. Hence, represented are the Minusinsk Basin, the Altai range, and Western Siberia, with six cemeteries from the fourth century B.C. to the tenth century A.D. ; Central Asia with six cemeteries from the fifth century B.C. to the tenth century A.D.; the middle reaches of the Volga and the course of the Kama with six cemeteries from the third century to the ninth A.D. ; finally the south Russian steppe with seventeen cemeteries from the Scythian Period to the twelfth century A.D. (Table 11). Examinations were made according to PENROSE'S distance

—analysis, based on the ten most important cranial messurements (PENROSE, 1954; RAHMAN, 1962). These measurements are as follows : the greatest length, breadth, and height of the skull; the smallest breadth of the forehead; the basion-nasion and the basionprosthion lengths ; the bizygomatic breadth ; the upper face and the orbital height ; the nasal breadth. The results of the calculations can briefly be summarized as follows : 1. Neither the Ártánd males nor the females resemble the examined series of the great migrations from the Central Danubian Basin. 2. The Ártánd males do not resemble the series of the Árpádian Age in the Central Danubian Basin either; the females stand near to a group, that from the Veszprém-Kálváriadomb. It is known that one of the centres of the Avar quarters in the Transdanubia had been around Veszprém, it is therefore justified to look for this population, especially in the female graves, in the Árpádian Age cemeteries of the Veszprém area. 3. The sole parallels of the Ártánd males had been found only in the series originating from the territory of the Soviet Union. They rather closely resemble two Sarmatian series (III. c. B.C.

—III. c. A.D.) exposed near Dnepropetrovsk and Saratov. The similarity, shown statistically, with these two series is corroborated also by the taxonomic characters. DEBETS (1948) and KONDUKTOROVA (1956) seem to recognize in these series the elements of the Andronovo type which, according to LIPTÁK (1959), corresponds to the Eastern variety of the Cromagnoid type. The Ártánd females resemble only a single series from Sarkel, of the X

—XII c. A.D., of all twentytwo examined ones. In this series, the Soviet authors (VTJICH— GINSBTJRG

—EIRSHTEIN, 1963) establish the dominancy of the Central Asian—inter-