Department of Bioarchaeology

This paper presents the initial stages of an interdisciplinary study of human skeletal remains interred at Verteba Cave, western Ukraine. This site has been described previously as a " ritual site of the Trypillian culture complex " by Nikitin et al. (2010), and the material considered here is one of seven crania recovered during excavations at Verteba between 2008 and 2010. Palaeopathological analysis of the individual considered here indicates that this is a young adult female with evidence for peri-mortem injury, cranial surgery and processing for interment. This evidence, together with the burial context itself, provides the first insights into early stage Trypillia culture inter-personal interactions and burial ritual in this region of Ukraine.

The agricultural revolution in Eastern Europe began in the Eneolithic with the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture complex. In Ukraine, the Trypillian culture (TC) existed for over two millennia (ca. 5,400–2,700 BCE) and left a wealth of artifacts. Yet, their burial rituals remain a mystery and to date almost nothing is known about the genetic composition of the TC population. One of the very few TC sites where human remains can be found is a cave called Verteba in western Ukraine. This report presents four partial and four complete mitochondrial genomes from nine TC individuals uncovered in the cave. The results of this analysis, combined with the data from previous reports, indicate that the Trypillian population at Verteba carried, for the most part, a typical Neolithic farmer package of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineages traced to Anatolian farmers and Neolithic farming groups of central Europe. At the same time, the find of two specimens belonging to haplogroup U8b1 at Verteba can be viewed as a connection of TC with the Upper Paleolithic European populations. At the level of mtDNA haplogroup frequencies, the TC population from Verteba demonstrates a close genetic relationship with population groups of the Funnel Beaker/ Trichterbecker cultural complex from central and northern Europe (ca. 3,950–2,500 BCE).

Rescue excavations on the Bandkeramik (LBK) settlement of Rovantsi in Volhynia brought to light several extraordinary objects such as two valves of Spondylus gaederopus and Šárka style pottery. Those discoveries reaffirm the extent of the Early Neolithic long-distance exchange network, of which the easternmost LBK settlements once formed an integral part. A calvarium of a mature female was found in a pit at Rovantsi. Since skeletal remains of a Bandkeramik date are extremely rare in Ukraine, this discovery will be discussed in the following article.