ИСТИНА

The Demetrius of Thessaloniki church in the Dan’slavla street (northern part of present day Novgorod) was built in XIII c. AD and dismantled in 1847. During all that period there has been a parish cemetery of middle and lower class citizens near the church. Based on combination of radiocarbon dating and archeological evidences the skeletal sample has been divided into four chronological groups highly diverse in terms of pathological lesion prevalence, life expectancy, stature and other skeletal traits. The most striking differences were found between XVI and XVII cc. subsamples. In the latter, life expectancy drops as much as 5 years and average male stature decreases by 5-6 cm compared to the former. One can also see an increase in prevalence of head injuries, LEH and a number of other stress markers in the later subsample. The Saint Pantaleon monastery in few km to the South from Novgorod was founded by the middle of XII c. AD by a noble and rich family of the city and has served as a boyar’s shrine until XV c. In XVI-XVII cc. the monastery lost its status and was assigned to famous Yur’ev monastery. After that the monastery’s domain became an estate and its cathedral turned into a parish church. Studying burials of these different stages revealed huge differences between "boyars" and "monks" skeletal samples in terms of demographic structure, body size and proportions, pathology and stress markers prevalence. The most exciting finding is an unprecedented number of healed severe skeletal traumas in the latter subsample, observed in 7 out 11 skeletons. Finally, a comparison of synchronous subsamples from both cemeteries has also revealed many interesting results. For instance, in the XIV-XV cc. sample from Dan’slavla prevalence of skeletal pathologies was less than in the "boyars" sample from the Saint Pantaleon.