A Skull with the Combat Trauma from the Senty Monastery. On the Archaeological Research History of the Teberda Sites
The palaeoanthropological collection at the Historical and Archaeological Museum Preserve of Tauric Chersonese keeps a male skull featuring military trauma, which originates from the collection accumulated by V. M. Sysoev in 1896 in course of his researches at the Senty architectural complex. The skull belongs to a man of Caucasian appearance form in the age of adultus (up to 30 years). From the complex of morphological features, there are reasons to consider it among the palaeoanthropological types typical of the region in question in the final stage of the Mediaeval period. On the left parietal bone there is a sub-rectangular through hole measuring ca. 30 mm in length and 10 mm in width, interpreted with a high degree of probability as a combat injury inflicted by a short-shaft weapon such as battle pick. There is no sign of the wound healing. This palaeoanthropological find is historically important as a mark of a certain stage of research of the Christian antiquities in the Caucasus.