Researchers at other Neolithic sites in the Near East have often surmised that skulls and crania were acquired in this manner (e.
Kuijt (2000, 2001, 2008) and Goring-Morris (2000), for example, have argued that the circulation of crania or skulls and other secondary funerary treatments helped to maintain social cohesion and relieve societal tensions within Neolithic communities through collective ritual practices and the creation of shared social memory.
The removal of a femur, the longest bone in the human body, would have displaced the three crania, the pelvic bones, and many other bones, yet no evidence of such disturbance was found.
The total number of bones recovered from the site is 79 (Table 1) representing a minimum of three individuals, based on the presence of three crania and three right humeri, radii, and ulnae.
1) crania of macerated dead humans received by the institutions mentioned before,
2) crania belonging to the late 19th century till death as per records,
While under ideal circumstances the covariance matrix should reflect variation similar to that of the subjects under examination, this is clearly impossible in the case of fossil
crania.
Fifty-eight percent of
crania from the Spanish sample were classified into European or North African groups using the Sex Unknown search and 55 percent using the Sex Known information.
None of the seven
crania has been found in situ in host sediments and none has been radiocarbon dated, so direct evidence of the absolute geologic ages, environments of entombment, and faunal associates of the specimens is lacking.
Most finds have been of
crania or (more rarely) mandibles; post-cranial remains are very rare, although a tibia fragment was found at Sambungmachan, and a clavicle at Narmada in India (Sankhyan 1997).
This arrangement appears in all 13
crania of Hadar A.
He examined the
crania of 66 chimpanzees,99 gorillas and 108 orangutans obtained from the U.