Elongated skull from Italian cave reveals earliest European evidence of cranial modification
Justin Jackson
褋ontributing writer
Sadie Harley
scientific editor
Robert Egan
associate editor
A University of Florence鈥搇ed team reports early Eurasian evidence of artificial cranial modification (ACM) in a Late Upper Paleolithic individual from Arene Candide Cave, Italy. Shape analyses place the specimen within the ACM cluster and radiocarbon dates to 12,620鈥�12,190 years ago.
Body culturalization runs deep in human history, from adornments to permanent modifications recorded in archaeological contexts. More than just stylistic choices, transformations in appearance impart cultural values and symbolic meanings through the physical body, serving as a living artifact of cultural practices and societal beliefs, perpetuating shared values and collective identity.
Searching for these cultural clues with archaeology can be tricky. Tattoos require rare forms of soft-tissue preservation (脰tzi the iceman, for example) and adornments like piercings fall away with deteriorating flesh, whereas skeletal markers such as intentional dental modification and cranial modifications offer more lasting evidence of practices that shaped identity over millennia.
ACM, also known as intentional cranial deformation, often stands out with distinct morphologies. The practice involves the application of pressure to an infant's head during its developmental stages, reshaping of the cranium before the bones have fused. Two types of ACM are the most often identified: a tabular modification and circumferential (annular) modification.
The first type is achieved using rigid objects, such as wooden boards, resulting in a flattening of the occipital and frontal areas and a broadening of the parietal bones. The second is achieved by using softer tools, such as tightly bound cloth, leading to an overall elongation of the neurocranium.
ACM is documented across various continents and spans millennia, from the end of the Pleistocene to recent times. While easily apparent in a fully intact skull, the often-fragmentary nature of skeletal remains can still reveal the practice with a little statistical assist.
In the study, "Early European evidence of artificial cranial modification from the Italian Late Upper Paleolithic Arene Candide Cave," in Scientific Reports, researchers used virtual anthropology and geometric morphometrics to compare an excavated individual's (AC12) cranial morphology with LUP, Mesolithic, and Neolithic Italian specimens, pathologically modified individuals, and a global sample of ACM cases.
At Arene Candide Cave on the Ligurian coast of northwesterly Italy, the Epigravettian necropolis spans the Younger Dryas, with AMS dates between 12,900 and 11,600 years ago and a minimum number of 22 buried individuals.
AC12's cranium was intentionally placed atop burial AC15 within a stone niche, with the mandible and postcranial elements in a nearby secondary cluster. Dates from AC12 postcranial elements calibrate to 12,620鈥�12,190 BP, and the authors note a flat calibration curve around this interval.
Virtual anthropological methods produced four independent reconstructions alongside the original restoration. CT scanning, manual segmentation, mirrored fragment alignment via MeshLab ICP, and landmarking plus surface semilandmarks fed into Generalized Procrustes Analysis and principal component analyses.
Principal component analyses show AC12 (all reconstructions and the original) clustering with annular-type ACM individuals and outside the distributions of LUP鈥揗esolithic鈥揘eolithic and pathological groups.
Typicality probabilities yield p-values below 0.05 for pathological and LUP鈥揗esolithic鈥揘eolithic assignments and above 0.05 within ACM. Multinomial logistic regression achieves 93.48% accuracy in the landmarks-only model and 100% in the landmarks+semilandmarks model, classifying AC12 as ACM in all cases.
Pairwise Procrustes distances indicate AC12 is most similar to ACM individuals. Craniosynostosis patterns in comparative pathological cases do not match AC12's elongated, flattened neurocranial morphology.
The authors conclude that AC12 represents the oldest documented ACM case in Europe, supporting Paleolithic roots for a globally distributed practice. Placement within a complex funerary program points to culturally mediated body modification as a marker of ascribed identity in hunter-gatherer societies.
Only one of five intact crania from the site also shows modification, suggesting a subgroup signal rather than a community-wide marker, with permanent infant-applied shaping embodying a trans-generational identity transmission.
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More information: Tommaso Mori et al, Early European evidence of artificial cranial modification from the Italian Late Upper Palaeolithic Arene Candide Cave, Scientific Reports (2025).
Journal information: Scientific Reports
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