The study was carried out between June 21th and July 15th by physical anthropologists Francesca Bertoldi, Lia Bitadze and Piera Allegra Rasia (assisted by Shorena Laliashvili and Nino Tavarchiladze) at the Institute of History and Ethnology of the Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University in Tbilisi, where the human bones from the 2012 excavation season at Doghlauri had been deposited by the excavators. Materials from the 2013 season has apparently been disposed of due to the difficult conditions in which the campaign had been carried out, and were therefore not available for study, while materials from the 2015 season had been studied on the field by the members of the Georgian-Italian joint project (see F. Bertoldi, I. Gagoshidze, E. Rova, R. Cameriere, The Human Remains from Doghlauri Cemetery (Field Season 2015), in L. Bitadze, L. Mindadze, S. Laliashviki, D. Chitanava, A. Ruadze (eds.), Anthropology and Ethnology of Caucasus. Proceedings of International Conference dedicated to the 90th Anniversary of Academician Malkas Abdishelishvili, Tbilisi: 24-33).
The analysed human bones derived from 65 graves, 22 of which had been identified as Kura-Araxes, and 43 as Late Bronze-Early Iron Age. 16 graves (belonging to both periods) contained the remains of more than one individual (Figs. 13, 14), some of which represent reduction burials; as a consequence, the number of individuals is higher than the number of graves, in spite of the fact that individual burials predominate. Kura-Araxes graves hosting a single individual, in particular, are 12 out of 16 (preliminary summary data are presented in Tab. 1 below).
The conditions of preservation of the bones vary between fair and bad: items are often fragmented and partially or totally miss the spongy portions; the cortical part of bones and teeth enamel show a moderate to heavy erosion.
As a consequence, bones could be measured only in some cases, while erosion did not allow to systematically record evidence of pathologies (such as enamel hypoplasia, periostitis and spondiloarthrosis), which are normally visible on the surface of bones and teeth.
The skeletons were often incomplete and sometimes represented only by a few elements (mostly diaphyses of long bones and fragments of the skull), so that in some cases it was not possible to determine sex and/or age of the individuals.
Anthropological study was carried out according to standard methods. It concentrated both on sex and age determination, and on taking measures useful for calculating morphometrical indexes, on detecting discontinual characters (especially on teeth and in the cranial area), on observing ergonomic and MOS characters and, finally, on observing the presence of possible skeleton and teeth pathologies (Fig. 15). Part of these data (those concerning sex and age, metrical, ergonomic and pathological markers), will be used for collecting information (demographic profile, style of life and health) about the population of the two different phases of use of the cemetery. On the other hand, morphological features will provide information about possible family relations among different individuals, on the basis of the analysis of the frequency of these features and of their distribution throughout the cemetery.
Preliminary results of the analysis are presented in Tabs 1, 2, below: Tab. 1 offers a general view of the analysed graves; sex and age determinations are presented in Tab. 2.
