The Body Sizes and Proportions of the Sunghir People

Abstract

Considerations of the body proportions and estimates of body mass and stature of the Sunghir people provide a general baseline for the assessment of a variety of aspects of their paleobiology. They also furnish some indications by themselves. Some of these aspects have been men­tioned with respect to sexual assessment of the adult remains (especially Sunghir 1 and 4; chapter 6), and methodological considerations have been addressed in part in chapter 5. What is presented here is a more detailed assessment of size in terms of body mass estimation and stature, and considerations of body proportions to the extent that they can be evaluated for Sunghir 1, 2 and 3. Body mass estimation was discussed in chapter 5, and it is done here exclusively using the dimension of the weight-bearing femoral articulations and/or metaphyses. It provides insights into trends in overall body size and health, but it is also central to the appropriate scaling of other aspects of morphology, from limb length and strength to brain size. Since the early comments of Boule (1911–1913) and Coon (1962), there has been a series of attempts to evaluate the body proportions (principally using limb segment lengths but also body breadth and trunk length) of Pleistocene humans as indications of both ecogeographical patterning among Late Pleistocene humans and possible reflections of their population dynamics (e.g., Trinkaus 1981, 2007; Walker and Leakey 1993; Ruff 1994; Holliday 1997a, 1997b, 2000, 2006a; Trinkaus and Zilhão 2002; Frelat 2007). The critical problem in assessing body proportions is to determine the independent variable. This must be done a priori, based on biological considerations. Stature estimation presents a variety of difficulties among Late Pleistocene humans, given variation in linear body proportions, but it can provide an indication of overall health, especially given the trends evident through the European Upper Paleolithic (Formicola and Giannecchini 1999; Holt and Formicola 2008). Assessments of body proportions depend in part on body mass estimation, and stature predictions depend on body proportions.