Artificial Cranial Modification Research Articles

Isotopic sourcing reveals changing subsistence, cultural diversity and biological correlates with palaeodiet in fourth- to seventh-century AD Bavaria

Stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic ratios (δ13C, δ15N) in bone collagen of archaeological skeletal finds are indicators of the protein sources in individuals’ basic diet. Isotopic sourcing allows us to quantify the biomass contribution of major dietary components and to differentiate between the source contribution of various animal species (domesticates, game). We re-evaluated previously published isotopic signatures in skeletons from three burial sites in Bavaria, dated from Late Antiquity to Early Mediaeval times (Erding-Klettham, Erding-Altenerding, Straubing-Bajuwarenstraße) by use of a mixing model. The result is a more detailed reconstruction, supported by contextual evidence, of both early subsistence economies and individual dietary preferences. We were able to confirm relationships between non-local dietary behaviour and foreign cultural influences (grave goods and artificial cranial modification) that have previously been suggested by the burial context and DNA analyses and that are plausibly explained by migration events. Moreover, we differentiated early and late immigrants from each other, requiring a re-evaluation of the earlier interpretation of exogamy. In addition, individual dietary preferences indicate even more migration events and social stratifications that could not previously be identified by the archaeological evidence alone.

A 10 ka intentionally deformed human skull from Northeast Asia

AbstractThe oldest‐known undoubted cultural practices of intentional cranial deformation (ICD, also known as artificial cranial modification) appeared in the Middle East, Australia, and Northeast China in the terminal Pleistocene‐early Holocene populations. Here, we report an ICD calvarium fossil (Songhuajiang II) discovered from an underwater sand mining site near Harbin City in Northeast China. With a calibrated accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon age of 11,095–10,745 BP, the fossil calvarium is among the oldest‐known ICD records in the world. A combination of pronounced superciliary arches, salient temporal lines, and relatively round and dull supraorbital margin, together with moderately wide interorbital space, flat glabella region without infraglabellar notch, flat and small zygomatic trigon, round and inclined superior‐lateral orbital margin, and largely closed sutures, suggests that Songhuajiang II skull belonged to a middle‐aged Asian man. The man has flat frontal and occipital bone, conical posterior parietal region, and a circular depression posterior to the coronal suture, and more subdivisions and many crenulated terminal branches on the anterior branch of the middle meningeal vessels. These features are typical for the tabular deformation methodology of ICD. The discovery, together with previously known ICD records (Songhuajiang I, Qianguo Man Qingshantou 1, and Djalai‐Nor cranium), suggests that the ICD cultural practice has a long and continuous history in Northeast Asia.

“Coneheads” in the Gepid period : Artificial cranial deformation in a community by the Tisza River

The deliberate physical transformation of the human body is a very ancient custom that humans have been practicing since prehistoric times. Most methods concerned the soft tissues of the body, the piercing, expanding, and stretching of which have been widespread in terms of both time and space. Significantly fewer procedures targeted the bony skeletal parts. One of these is the artificial modification of the skull, of which, also, examples are known from almost every historical period and continent. The custom of artificial cranial deformation became quite widespread in the Carpathian Basin in the Hun and Gepid Periods. This study presents the anthropological characteristics of people with artificially deformed skulls in the Gepid Period cemetery at Tiszaug-Országúti bevágás, unearthed in two seasons (2018–19). It aims to contribute to our current knowledge of the custom of artificial cranial modification in the Carpathian Basin in the Gepid Period.

Evaluating the efficiency of isolated calvaria bones shape changes in the identification and differentiation of artificial cranial modification techniques among pre-Hispanic western and central Mesoamerican populations

IntroductionArtificial cranial modification (ACM) is a widespread cultural phenomenon that has been reported in human populations from Late Pleistocene to present day all over the world. Although ACM techniques have been documented in western and central Mesoamerica, the state of preservation of bone has occasionally limited the possibility of diagnosing and differentiating ACM variants. To explore how informative fragmentary skull remains can be in this matter, here we used 3D geometric morphometrics to quantify shape variation of isolated calvaria bones. Materials and Methods49 well preserved individuals from west and central Mesoamerica were selected and divided into five groups: four showing distinct forms of ACM, and a control group of unmodified skulls. Using medical computed tomography and laser surface scanning, we measured the 3D shape changes in three isolated calvaria bones. We calculated the morphological differences within and between groups by computing pairwise Procrustes distances for all possible combinations of individuals. Finally, we used 3D digital meshes to describe the shape changes in an ACM variant compared to the other ones and to the control group. ResultsIrrespective of which bone of the calvaria is considered, the variation between the individuals showing ACM and the unmodified individuals always exceeds the variation measured within the unmodified group. Furthermore, some ACM variants can be characterized by examining certain calvaria bones in isolation. DiscussionThe study of isolated calvaria bones can help to identify individuals with ACM from the background physiological variation. Our study also provides information pertaining to the techniques employed to produce certain ACM variants and we discuss the standardization of these processes.

Childhood and Identity Acquisition in the Late Prehispanic Ónavas Valley, Sonora, Mexico

ABSTRACT Identity acquisition is a lifelong process that begins prior to birth (passive), becomes more active with self-awareness, and continues throughout the enculturation process. We argue that in childhood, as a liminal period of the life course, individuals are subject to a combination of active and passive forces of identity acquisition, largely determined first by family/parental decisions, then by community decisions as part of the enculturation process. We test this idea by reconstructing episodes of identity acquisition across social age categories in a late prehispanic (AD 900–1300) skeletal sample from the site of El Cementerio from north-west Mexico, which represents the central community of a settlement system in the valley of Ónavas, Sonora, Mexico. Artificial cranial modification, dental modification, and the placement of funerary objects reflect intersecting identities and provide clues to social age and identity acquisition within the community.

Population-level assessment of atlas occipitalization in artificially modified crania from pre-Hispanic Peru.

Atlas occipitalization (AO) is a spinal anomaly, characterized by the fusion of the first cervical vertebra and occipital bone, with a complex etiology that can arise from congenital and environmental causes. AO has been reported in three regions of pre-Hispanic Peru in skeletal remains with artificial cranial modification (ACM), which involves the use of compression devices to permanently alter cranial shape and may have affected the fusion of the atlas and occipital bone. The aims of this study were to gain insights into AO’s etiology by testing correlations between AO and ACM presence/type and geographic region as well as to characterize morphological variation associated with AO. We investigated the geographic distribution of AO and its potential relationship to ACM in a large sample of human crania from eight coastal and highland regions of pre-Hispanic Peru, held at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (n = 608, 1300–1500 CE). Eleven cases of AO were observed in three coastal regions—including two previously unreported regions—at an overall frequency of 1.8%. The frequency of AO did not differ significantly between crania with and without ACM, in general or by type, suggesting that ACM is not an etiological factor that influences AO in this sample. AO was observed at a significantly higher rate in the southern coastal region of Arequipa than in any other region. Genetic, dietary, and epidemiological conditions are evaluated as factors possibly shaping the geographic distribution of AO along the central and southern coasts of Peru.

Chiffonniers in the Periphery: Émile Bernard’s Ragpickers of Clichy and Nineteenth-Century Artificial Cranial Modification

Founded in 2002, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide is a scholarly, refereed e-journal devoted to the study of nineteenth-century painting, sculpture, graphic arts, photography, architecture, and decorative arts across the globe.

Neurocranial shape variation among Tarascan populations: Evidence for varying degrees in artificially modified crania in pre‐Hispanic West Mexico (1200–1400 AD)

Along the Mesoamerican western margin, the Zacapu basin has yielded a large number of human remains demonstrating usage of artificial cranial modification (ACM). However, at the onset of the Middle Postclassic (1200-1400 AD) only few individuals still exhibit clear signs of ACM. Some authors have suggested that, rather than disappearing entirely, ACM may have become less visible anatomically, making it difficult to identify based on simple visual analyses. Here, we used 3D geometric morphometric methods to investigate the extent to which ACM persisted during the Postclassic in this region. We measured the 3D vault's shape changes in a sample of surface-scanned human crania: 55 individuals from the Postclassic Zacapu basin and a control group of 31 individuals from a Huichol Mexican Indian sample and a French medieval series from La Granède. We used a principal component analysis to explore the shape variation within the sample and employed the neighbor joining method to identify morphological groups. Finally, we quantified each individual's asymmetry. We identified three groups displaying shape features diverging from those of the control group. The first group is characterized by marked fronto-obelionic ACM, whereas the other two show mild forms of ACM. The individuals in all three groups display moderate to high degrees of asymmetry compared to the control group. The marked fronto-obelionic modification is clear evidence of a specific ACM technique. The two types of mild ACM most likely result from different techniques but their moderate degree of modification brings into question the intentions behind their production.

Infants from the Tarapacá 40 cemetery (Northern Chile, Formative Period, 1000 BC–AD 600)

AbstractThis study explores the age at death structure, skeletal lesions, and artificial cranial modification (ACM) on 35 nonadults until their 38 months of life recovered from the Tarapacá 40 cemetery, Northern Chile. Age estimations were based primarily on long bones dimensions, whereas skeletal lesions and ACM were recognized on dry bones and in mummified and bundled bodies. Measurements and observations in these later were performed by radiographies. Results show a distribution of ages at death clustered in three groups: around birth and second month of life, between 9 and 12 months of life, and between 18 and 26 months of life. The presence of physiological disruption indicators such as porotic hyperostosis, cribra orbitalia, criba femoris, periostitis and Harris lines, and ACM is described. Then, we discussed the observed age at death structure and the skeletal lesions as reflecting weaning process, and the links between the nature and timing of this practice with social organization of care labour, control over female sexuality, and socio‐economic transformations occurring during the Formative Period in Northern Chile.

Artificial Deformation of Skulls from Bronze Age and Iron Age Armenia

Cultural practices resulting in lasting modifications of the body can be a productive focus of investigation. Artificial cranial modification involves the alteration of cranial vault shape by cultural means, and is performed during infancy or early childhood while the cranial bones remain malleable. Our results indicate that tumpline deformation and cradle deformation should be added to the suite of cranial deformations that were detected in Armenia. It has been determined that the occipital modification is most likely unintentional. Post-coronal depression also appears to be unintentional. Cradle deformation is heavily influenced by infant sleep position, and constant supine positioning is a frequent cause of deformation during infancy. In the Armenian burials 32 skulls showing signs of cradle deformation are identified. Post-coronal depression, positioned on both parietals and slightly posterior to the coronal suture, was detected on 44 of the skulls. The deformation was a correlate of economic activities of the population and was an inadvertent consequence of carrying loads with a band across the parietal bones. In 12 cases a combination of the two types of deformation (tumpline and cradle), is observed. The only modification that has been classified as intentional is one case of parieto-temporal modification. Key words: Armenia, Bronze Age, Iron Age, post-coronal depression, cradle deformation, parieto-temporal modification

A metric assessment of evidence for artificial cranial modification at the Boisman 2 Neolithic cemetery (ca. 5800–5400 14C BP), Primorye, Russian Far East

The Middle Neolithic (ca. 5800–5400 14C BP) shell-midden cemetery Boisman 2, located on the Russian coast of the Sea of Japan, is one of only three Neolithic sites in all of Primorye at which human remains have been recovered, and therefore it is the key site representing a major cultural reorganization in which terrestrial foragers adopted a more seasonally-sedentary, marine-based subsistence economy. Previous research at the site has described a variety of forms of artificial cranial modification. As a permanent bodily modification that is applied to infants, cranial modification is one important method of symbolizing ascribed social identities and so can be useful for archaeological investigations into inter- and intra-group social relations. The aim of the present study is to re-evaluate the evidence for cranial modification at Boisman 2 using two sets of discriminant function analyses designed to provide a more objective means of identifying modified and unmodified crania. Our results confirm the use of artificial cranial modification at the site, making Boisman 2 one of the earliest – if not the earliest – documented example of the practice in Holocene East Asia; however, our metric analysis identified only six crania as modified, instead of the 11 previously identified through visual assessment. Further research is required to determine whether this discrepancy is a product of the conservative nature of the discriminant functions, the potential that the discriminant function produces inaccurate results for crania from this population, or whether normal or incidental variation in this population resembles artificial cranial shaping. Finally, as a means of introducing some potential hypotheses for future research, we discuss preliminary associations between the presence of cranial modification, age, sex, and burial cluster.

Brief communication: Artificial cranial modification in Kow Swamp and Cohuna.

The crania from Kow Swamp and Cohuna have been important for a number of debates in Australian paleoanthropology. These crania typically have long, flat foreheads that many workers have cited as evidence of genetic continuity with archaic Indonesian populations, particularly the Ngandong sample. Other scientists have alleged that at least some of the crania from Kow Swamp and the Cohuna skull have been altered through artificial modification, and that the flat foreheads possessed by these individuals are not phylogenetically informative. In this study, several Kow Swamp crania and Cohuna are compared to known modified and unmodified comparative samples. Canonical variates analyses and Mahalanobis distances are generated, and random expectation statistics are used to calculate statistical significance for these tests. The results of this study agree with prior work indicating that a portion of this sample shows evidence for artificial modification of the cranial vault. Many Kow Swamp crania and Cohuna display shape similarities with a population of known modified individuals from New Britain. Kow Swamp 1, 5, and Cohuna show the strongest evidence for modification, but other individuals from this sample also show evidence of culturally manipulated changes in cranial shape. This project provides added support for the argument that at least some Pleistocene Australian groups were practicing artificial cranial modification, and suggests that caution should be used when including these individuals in phylogenetic studies.

The Distribution and Cultural Context of Artificial Cranial Modification in the Central and Southern Philippines

Given its regional scope and good provenience information, the Guthe Collection offers a rare opportunity to examine both the spatial distribution and the cultural context of artificial cranial modification (ACM) in the archaeological record of the central and southern Philippines. A combination of visual classification and discriminant function analysis was used to classify the cranial sample into modified and unmodified groups. Following this, the relative frequency of each class of crania by island was explored. The results show that 95 percent of the artificially modified crania in this sample were recovered from the Visayan group, and most of these were found on the islands of Samar and Tablas. Not only did these two islands have the greatest percentage of modified crania (among islands with a sample size greater than one), they were also the only islands from which crania of ambiguous modification status were recovered. On the basis of these results, it would appear that the practice of ACM may have been more common among historic populations on Samar and Tablas than on other islands in the study region. Statistical tests were then conducted in order to explore the hypothesis that cranial modification was an elite practice. The available evidence suggests that the practice of ACM in the central and southern Philippines was not limited to members of the social elite.

Estimation of stature and body mass from the skeleton among coastal and mid‐altitude andean populations

Adult stature and body mass represent fundamental biological characteristics of individuals and populations, as they are relevant to a range of problems from assessing nutrition and health to longer term evolutionary processes. Stature and body mass estimation from skeletal dimensions are therefore key to addressing biological and social questions about past populations. Anatomical reconstruction provides the most direct proxy for living stature but is only suitable for well-preserved remains. Regression equations for estimating stature from bone lengths are therefore extremely useful, though it is well recognized that differences in body proportions limit the cross-application of equations between samples. Here, we assess the accuracy of published stature estimation equations from worldwide and New World groups applied to archaeological samples from the central Andean coast and highlands of South America. As no existing equations are clearly appropriate, new sample-specific regression equations are presented. Anatomical stature reconstruction is further complicated by artificial cranial modification (ACM) influencing cranial height in Andean samples, so this problem is investigated in the current sample. Although ACM has minimal impact here, the possibility should be explored in other samples before anatomical stature estimation is attempted. Recommendations are also made for estimating body mass from femoral head diameter. The mean of three previously published equations is shown to offer minimal bias and the most reliable estimate of body mass in the study samples.

Artificial cranial modification on a female skeleton from the Byzantine site of Maroneia (Thrace, Greece)

Artificial cranial modification is one of the most often documented types of intentional intervention on the human skeleton in the anthropological record. A female cranium exhibiting headshaping recently came to light at the Early Byzantine site of Maroneia, in Thrace, northern Greece. Headshaping was practiced by several different population groups during the migration period (1st–9th c. AD), but was unknown in Byzantine customs. Homogeneity in burial customs, evidenced by the skeleton's position and orientation and by cemetery topography, strongly supports the hypothesis that this burial belonged to a Christianised citizen who had the right to be buried in a common Christian cemetery. Headshaping provides strong evidence for the cultural adaptability and complexity of Early Byzantine society at Maroneia, an important provincial urban centre of the Byzantine Empire. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A metric study of three types of artificial cranial modification from north‐central Peru

AbstractArtificial cranial modification (ACM) involves the alteration of cranial vault shape by cultural means, and is performed during infancy while the cranial bones remain soft and malleable. The direction of normal cranial growth is altered through the application of external forces. In this study, three types of ACM from north‐central Peru (posterior flattening, bilobed and circumferential) were analysed using standard craniometric techniques. The aim was to determine the effects of these forms of ACM on craniofacial morphology, and the extent to which different types of ACM could be distinguished from one another and unmodified crania on the basis of these measurements. Significant differences between artificially modified and unmodified crania, and between different types of ACM, were demonstrated in cranial vault shape for all types. Significant differences in facial morphology were found only in the bilobed group compared with the unmodified crania. Canonical variates analysis (discriminant analysis) confirmed that major differences between modification types and unmodified crania were in measurements and angles of the cranial vault. While the results show some similarities to previous studies, they add to the variability in the patterns and extent of differences documented to date. It is suggested, based on these results and visual observations, that interpopulation variation in ACM within major modification categories may explain some of the variability in results between studies, an explanation which has previously received insufficient recognition but which remains to be tested since varied methodology between studies may also be a contributory factor. While previous studies have often sought to generalise about the effects of ACM, the examination of the differences between populations even within major ACM categories may offer new insight into cultural variation in modification techniques between populations and the nature of craniofacial development. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Manipulation of Social and Physical Identity in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic

Mortuary practices of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Near East have been identified with skull cult and ancestor worship, as a means of creating and eliminating social boundaries. Artificial cranial modification is recognized as related to these practices, but its incidence is under-recognized and the precise nature of its significance is rarely discussed. In this study a skull, not previously reported as artificially modified, was reassessed by radiography to provide further insight on this subject. The cranial modification identified must have occurred in childhood but did not dramatically alter the cranium. We therefore argue that the post-mortem treatment of artificially modified skulls should be viewed in the context of ritual practices that were of significance during life, not just after death.

Artificial cranial modification in prehistoric Iran

Artificial cranial modification in prehistoric Iran

Cranial Vault Modification and Ethnicity in Middle Horizon San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

Cranial Vault Modification and Ethnicity in Middle Horizon San Pedro de Atacama, Chile