ANTHROPOLOGICAL CABINET

Anthropology has been included in the Archaeological Department of the museum since 1983. The Anthropological cabinet was established in 2001.

Within this activity, care was taken about the skeleton finds in the course of the archaeological excavations of necropolis. Around 10,000 individual skeletons of all archaeological periods have been analysed. In chronological order, these are the following: prehistoric sites of Markova Sušica, Varvara and Hipodrom (Skopje), Vodovrati and Ulanci (Veles), Milci and Vardarski Rid (Gevgelija), Dedali (Valandovo), Otošnica and Opila (Kriva Palanka); medieval sites of Demir Kapija, Vinica Fortress, Pepelište and Bistrenci (Negotino), Dunje (Prilep), Orta Džamija and Vodoča (Strumica) and Plaošnik (Ohrid).

The anthropological research reconstructs the physical outlook of the people of the past, the palodemographic features of the population, ethnogenetic and anthoropogenetic processes in the prehistoric and historic periods, as well as palopathological image of the people in Macedonia. Several multi-year research projects have been implemented, such as “Anthropological Features of the Medieval Population of Crkvište – Demir Kapija”, “Anthropological Profile of the Antiquity Population of Stobi” and “Medieval Population of Orta Džamija and Vodoča – Strumica”. The results have been presented in four monographs and some thirty texts in expert magazines.
In 2004 there was an exhibition entitled “Man of the Past with Three-dimensional Reconstructions of Sculptures and Drawings” of 13 selected individuals, who were dated from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages.

Fanica Veljanovska, Ph.D. anthropologist