THE HEIGHT OF CHILDREN IN RUSSIAN TOWNS IN THE 15^th–17th CENTURIES

Abstract

Fieldwork of the Institute of Archaeology RAS in recent years has made it possible to unearth several hundred children’s burials, which belong to a narrow chronological range. Comparative research into these materials enabled to refine our understanding of the life quality of Russian towns’ population during the late Middle Ages. The study sample includes the remains of children aged from new-born to 10 year-old from the 16th–17th centuries cemetery at the Church of St. John Chrysostom, Yaroslavl, and a synchronous sample from the excavations of the Tula Kremlin. For comparison, previously published materials from excavations of other contemporary necropolises were employed. In constructing growth graphs, only those cases were taken into account, where the preservation made it possible to determine the age by the teeth confirmed by microfocus radiography. The lengths of tubular bones in children from all archaeological samples were smaller (with the exception of the sample from the Novokharkovskoye cemetery) than modern standards. Children from Yaroslavl, Tula and Mozhaysk were smaller than children of the 14th–17th centuries from the Lithuanian city of Alytus. Between the ages of one to seven, they were considerably smaller than the English children from Yorkshire (Wharram Percy Cemetery), but then overtook them in size. Comparison with Polish urban samples shows an early growth acceleration in Yaroslavl and Tula children at the age of seven rather than at eight. However, the clavicle length in children under the age of 10 from archaeological samples was practically the same as in the modern group, which probably imply that this feature can be used to determine the biological age of young children in groups of similar chronology.