BildingBird

Facial reconstruction of a man from a nomadic burial of the Golden Horde period in the Bukey Steppe, Kazakhstan As a complex political formation, the Golden Horde was by no means characterized by ethnic homogeneity. Its urban populations, in particular, were exceptionally diverse. Anthropologist Georgy Debets (1948) describes the Mongolid component among its Tatars as potentially comprising South Siberian (Turanid) and Central Asian types, but notes that the small sample of only six or seven crania, many showing Europoid admixture, makes such distinctions uncertain. He therefore considers it preferable to characterize the Mongolid component primarily by its brachycranic form. For the Europoid component, Debets notes that Trofimova identified a predominantly Pamir-Fergana type. Although Central Asian brachycephals are morphologically closest to these crania, Debets argues that this does not necessarily indicate a Central Asian origin, since a similar type was present in the Lower Volga during the Sarmatian period, roughly a millennium earlier. Regarding the nomadic populations of the Golden Horde period, Debets writes that their ethnic composition was far from homogeneous and included various Turkic and Mongol tribes. He further notes that dating the burials of Turkic nomads presents considerable difficulties. When a burial contains no coins, the state of archaeological research on these cultures often makes it impossible to distinguish the crania of nomads dating to the Golden Horde period from those of earlier nomads, dating from the 10th–12th centuries. In the statistical calculations, Debets considered the crania from the burial mounds of the Bukey Steppe separately, as they differ sharply from the others. He describes these crania as characterized by a pronounced predominance of Europoid features and as virtually identical to the brachycephalic Sarmatian type found in burial grounds of the Volga delta and along the Ural River. In all probability, he concludes, they are descendants of these Sarmatians.