Domestic Architecture, Roman
- PDF / 5,969,748 Bytes
- 194 Pages / 504.567 x 720 pts Page_size
- 26 Downloads / 209 Views
Dali, Archaeology of Xinzhi Wu Department of Palaeoanthropology, Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
Introduction The site was found by a geologist during a geological survey. It was located in a small gully, named Tianshuigou, near Jiefang Village, Dali County, Shaanxi Province in northwestern part of China. The human cranium was embedded in the brown grayish gravels in the third terrace of the Luohe River. It is a rather complete cranium, but the supero-posterior part of the skull-cap, some part of the zygomatic arches, and the pterygoid processes are missing. The lower part of the face was deformed by the upward depression of the alveolar process which is not intact and without dentition. The robustness of the cranium indicates it belongs to a male. Most of the cranial sutures are clear, except that part between the greater wing of the sphenoid and the temporal squama which was obliterated. This suggests that the cranium probably belonged to an individual of an age in lower thirties.
Key Issues/Current Debates/Future Directions/Examples The maximum cranial length of the Dali cranium is 206.5 mm. Its maximum cranial breadth is 149.5 mm and across the supramastoid crest. This position of the maximum breadth and the height of the vault are intermediate between those of Homo erectus and Homo sapiens. The Dali cranium is closer to Homo sapiens than to many other Middle Pleistocene humans (MPH) in some measurements such as the overall size of the cranium, sagittal curvature, ratio of height to breadth of occipital, frontal angle, and degree of postorbital constriction. The Dali cranium is within the variation range of MPH of both eastern and western Eurasia in some measurements such as various length of the cranium, breadth of cranial base, bi-asterionic breadth, horizontal circumference, and transverse arc. The Dali cranium possessed many measurements closer to MPH of China than to those of Europe, such as in the occipital angle, depth of facial cranium, anterior interorbital breadth, minimum cheek height, degree of transverse flatness of upper face, and ratio of bregmatic height to maximum cranial length. It seems that the Dali cranium is closer to MPH of Europe than to Homo erectus of China, in maximum frontal breadth; total sagittal arc; its curvature; sagittal curvatures of frontal, parietal, and occipital bones; length of posterior margin of parietal; length of lower occipital scale;
C. Smith (ed.), Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2, # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014
D
2024
profile angle of frontal bone; bregmatic angle; transverse frontoparietal index; difference between g-op and g-i; and degree of postorbital constriction. The length-height index and upper facial index of the Dali cranium seem to be intermediate between MPH of China and Europe/Africa. Many nonmetrical features of the Dali cranium are similar to those of other Pleistocene crania in China. These are a median sagittal ridge a
Data Loading...
