Il6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 1 10 



ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE WESTERN PAMIRS 



Ginzburg * undertook to edit unpublished anthropological data col- 

 lected by N. V. Bogoiavlenskii (d. 1930) during his Central Asian 

 Expedition, 1898-1901, and now in the Moscow University Institute 

 of Anthropology. This report includes some measurements on 554 

 adult males from the regions of Matcha, Karategin, Darvaz, and the 

 western Pamirs (Rushan, Shugnan, Goran, Ishkashim, and Vakhan). 

 The latter area was formerly part of the Khanate of Bukhara, now a 

 portion of the Mountainous Badakhshan Autonomous Region. 



The population of the western Pamirs belongs to the eastern branch 

 of the Iranian peoples, and is subdivided into a number of isolated 

 ethnic groups living in narrow mountain valleys and gorges. In 

 addition to their native tongues, these people use the Tajik [Tadzhik] 

 languages. Their material culture is very close to that of the Mountain 

 Tajiks. 



The anthropology of this area was first studied by Maslovskii ^ 

 during 1895- 1899. A decade later came Shults,® whose measurements 

 were discounted by Ginzburg. Then followed Zarubin,^ who pub- 

 lished only a small part of his data, and Joyce,^ who published Sir 

 Aurel Stein's figures. 



Joyce considers that the Vakhan Tajiks are the "average" type for 

 this region, and that they are "pure representatives of the Alpine 

 type." Ginzburg disagrees with this classification, and points out 

 that Joyce's figures do not correspond with other descriptions of the 

 Alpine type, such as that of Collignon.^ 



L. V. Oshanin, leader of the expedition from the Uzbek Institute 



and archeology which will form the basis for summaries to be published later. 

 However, when he left in October 1947 to join the University of California 

 African Expedition, these publications were turned over to Dr. Hallam Movius, 

 Peabody Museum, Harvard. 



* Ginzburg, V. V., Antropologicheskii sostav naseleniia zapadnogo Pamira 

 [The anthropological composition of the population of the western Pamirs ac- 

 cording to N. V. Bogoiavlenskii's data]. AZH, No. i, 91-114, 1937. 



s Maslovskii, S., Galcha [Galchas]. AZH, No. 2, pp. 17-32, 1901. 



^ Shults, P., Zur Kentniss der arischen Bevolkerung des Pamirs. Orien- 

 talisches Archiv, Leipzig, vol. 11, 1912, and Landeskundliche Forschungen im 

 Pamir, Hamburg, 1916. 



'' Zarubin, L L, Materialy i Zametki po etnographii gornykh Tadzhikov, Dolina 

 Bartanga [Materials and notes on the ethnography of the Mountain Tajiks, 

 Bartang Valley]. Sbornik, Mus. Anthrop. and Ethnogr. U.S.S.R. Acad. Sci., 

 Leningrad, 1917. 



8 Joyce, T. A., Note on the physical anthropology of the Pamirs and Amu 

 Darya Basin. Journ. Roy. Anthrop. Inst., vol. 56, London, 1926. 



» Collignon, R., Mem. Soc. d' Anthrop., Paris, 1899. 



