BURIAL OF THE KARAKOL BRONZE AGE CULTURE IN THE ALTAI MOUNTAINS IN THE MENDUR-SOKKON VILLAGE (Preliminary Results of an Archaeological and Paleoanthropological Study)
The paper presents the results of excavations of the emergency burial of the Karakol culture of the Bronze Age in the village of Mendur-Sokkon in the Altai Mountains. The features of the funeral rite, the design of the stone box are described. A unique vessel was found in the burial, ornamented over the entire surface with fir-tree ornaments. The sign of the Odal rune is depicted on the bottom of the vessel. The burial is dated to the end of 3<sup>rd</sup> - beginning of the 2<sup>nd</sup> millennium BC. The craniological features of the local anthropological component of the composition of the early bronze cultures of southern Siberia with intermediate Caucasoid-Mongoloid racial features are clearly manifested on the skull of a woman from Mendur-Sokkon. One can argue about the great morphological similarity of the buried with individuals buried in the unified cultural burials of Ozernoye and Karakol in Central Altai. On a territorially wider scale, the skull of a woman from a burial in the village of Mendur-Sokkon resembles the craniological series of the Okunevo culture of the Minusinsk depression, which of all the cultural formations of the early bronze of southern and southern Western Siberia anthropologically is the most related to the Karakol one.