Durband Arthur C
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX; Department of Anthropology, Science Centre, South Australian Museum, Adelaide, Australia; Department of Archaeology, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia.
Am J Phys Anthropol. 2014 Sep;155(1):173-8. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.22563. Epub 2014 Jun 26.
The crania from Kow Swamp and Cohuna have been important for a number of debates in Australian paleoanthropology. These crania typically have long, flat foreheads that many workers have cited as evidence of genetic continuity with archaic Indonesian populations, particularly the Ngandong sample. Other scientists have alleged that at least some of the crania from Kow Swamp and the Cohuna skull have been altered through artificial modification, and that the flat foreheads possessed by these individuals are not phylogenetically informative. In this study, several Kow Swamp crania and Cohuna are compared to known modified and unmodified comparative samples. Canonical variates analyses and Mahalanobis distances are generated, and random expectation statistics are used to calculate statistical significance for these tests. The results of this study agree with prior work indicating that a portion of this sample shows evidence for artificial modification of the cranial vault. Many Kow Swamp crania and Cohuna display shape similarities with a population of known modified individuals from New Britain. Kow Swamp 1, 5, and Cohuna show the strongest evidence for modification, but other individuals from this sample also show evidence of culturally manipulated changes in cranial shape. This project provides added support for the argument that at least some Pleistocene Australian groups were practicing artificial cranial modification, and suggests that caution should be used when including these individuals in phylogenetic studies.
来自科沼泽（Kow Swamp）和科胡纳（Cohuna）的颅骨在澳大利亚古人类学的诸多争论中具有重要意义。这些颅骨通常有着长而扁平的前额，许多研究者将此作为与古代印度尼西亚人群，特别是恩加东（Ngandong）样本存在基因连续性的证据。其他科学家则声称，科沼泽的至少部分颅骨以及科胡纳头骨经过了人工改造，这些个体所具有的扁平前额在系统发育上并无信息价值。在本研究中，将几个科沼泽颅骨和科胡纳颅骨与已知的经过改造和未经过改造的对比样本进行了比较。生成了典型变量分析和马氏距离，并使用随机期望统计来计算这些测试的统计显著性。本研究结果与先前的研究一致，表明该样本中有一部分显示出颅顶存在人工改造的证据。许多科沼泽颅骨和科胡纳颅骨与来自新不列颠的一群已知经过改造的个体在形状上相似。科沼泽1号、5号以及科胡纳显示出最强的改造证据，但该样本中的其他个体也显示出颅骨形状受到文化操控而发生变化的证据。该项目为至少一些更新世澳大利亚群体进行人工颅骨改造这一论点提供了更多支持，并表明在系统发育研究中纳入这些个体时应谨慎行事。
