Aurignacian female Crania and teeth from the Mladeč Caves, Moravia, Czech Republic

Abstract

The two female crania from Mladeč were both found in the Main Cave by Szombathy in 1881. This paper presents their description and comparisons, and the descriptions of several much more fragmentary crania. There is no reason to assume their chronological age differs from the other surviving Mladeč cranial material from the Main Cave or the remains from the Quarry Cave (Svoboda, 2000). Consequently, we do not repeat the geological and archaeological discussion in Frayer et al. (this volume). Mladeč 1 is the most complete of all the cranial remains from Mladeč. When first discovered it was regarded as male, but with the subsequent recovery of the Quarry Cave specimens (Mladeč 5 and 6), it became apparent that Mladeč 1 was female. While certainly not identical to Mladeč 1, the more incomplete calotte Mladeč 2 and the fragmentary face which articulates with it (Mladeč 7) constitute the second female. Both specimens are young adults based on dental criteria. The other specimens we very briefly describe in this chapter are fragments now destroyed (Mladeč 38 and 42) and the very fragmentary vault piece found by Knies (Mladeč 41) in the Main Cave. The latter, in the Moravské zemské muzeum Brno collections, is a small vault fragment that is unidentifiable (and unsexable). Based on the inventory provided by Szombathy (1925) and our revisions of it, certainly more female remains existed in the Main Cave, but these are the only survivors with useful information preserved. As with the Mladeč males, the tragedy at Mikulov castle robbed us all of a rich collection of early Upper Paleolithic female remains. Compared to the males, Mladeč 1 and 2 are considerably more gracile and differ between each other in various aspects of their preserved anatomy. These two contrast with Neandertal females much more than the Mladeč males contrast with Neandertal males. These two facts pose the main questions beyond the comparative descriptions that we consider here: the nature of sexual dimorphism at Mladeč, and the contrasting patterns of male and female evolution. Mladeč 1 and 2 are currently housed in the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien where they were studied by the authors at various times between 1974 and 2001. © 2006 Springer-Verlag/ Wien. All rights are reserved.