Reading Bone In The Laboratory

When the bones from Hourglass Cave reached the laboratories of researchers who could apply modern analytical methods to them, the first priority was establishing what the osteological analysis could confirm about the individual.

Physical anthropology — the study of human biological variation through skeletal remains — has developed over the past century into a sophisticated field capable of extracting substantial information from fragmentary remains.

The assessments of sex, age at death, stature, and physical activity described earlier in this article represent the application of this discipline to the Hourglass Cave bones.