New Biological Data on a Gravettian Humerus from the Cussac Cave (Dordogne, France)

Abstract

This article reports on a complete left human humerus from the Cussac Cave (Dordogne, France), dating to the Gravettian, or Mid-Upper Palaeolithic. This humerus is characterised by a very marked retroversion, significant intracortical porosity, an unusual morphology and orientation of the medial epicondyle, and a marked depression at the bottom of the olecranon fossa. These morphological features could be related to mechanical stimuli, but this is just an assumption given the absence of control data for many factors (e.g. age-at-death, sex, body mass, degree of asymmetry). Nevertheless, the description of this new discovery contributes significantly to our understanding of the range of variation of known Late Pleistocene skeletal morphology.