Bull. nat. Hist. Mus. Lond. (Geol.) 58(supp): 45-50 



Issued 26 June 2003 



Gough's Cave 1 (Somerset, England): an 

 Assessment of the Sex and Age at Death 



ERIKTRINKAUS 



Department of Anthropology. Campus Box 1114, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA 



LOUISE HUMPHREY & CHRIS STRINGER 



Department of Palaeontology, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, U.K. 



STEVEN E. CHURCHILL 



Department of Biological Anthropology and Anatomy, Box 3170, Duke University Medical Center, Durham NC 

 27710, USA 



ROBERT G. TAGUE 



Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA 



SYNOPSIS. The overall impression of the sexually dimorphic characteristics of Gough's Cave 1 is that the remains are those of 

 a male. However, the specimen does present some 'female' features in the facial skeleton, the ischiopubic rami and pelvic 

 apertures, combined with relatively small overall size, and an ambiguous greater sciatic notch morphology. Nevertheless, the 

 various features employed for sexual diagnosis of Gough's Cave are predominantly those which indicate or strongly suggest that 

 it is male, but this must be accompanied with the caveat that either this individual falls at the feminine end of the male range of 

 variation or that the patterns of skeletal sexual dimorphism of the population from which it derived were modestly different from 

 those of the mostly European and European-derived reference samples used for this assessment. In contrast to the ambiguities of 

 sex determination for Gough's Cave 1 , the various indicators of his age-at-death are highly consistent. All of them agree in placing 

 Gough's Cave 1 between his late second decade and middle third decade. He was unlikely to have been younger than about 18 

 years, and most likely was not older than about 23 years at death. 



INTRODUCTION 



The remains of Gough's Cave 1 have been considered to be those of 

 a 'young adult male' since Seligman & Parsons' (1914) original 

 partial description of the remains (e.g., Oakley, 1971; Stringer, 

 1985). The original assessment of the age in the second half of the 

 third decade was based on their observations of cranial sutures, 

 postcranial epiphyses and dental attrition. The sex assessment was 

 based entirely on comparisons of femoral proximal and distal epi- 

 physeal dimensions to those of Medieval British remains. However, 

 since the remains contain many more indicators of both sex and age, 

 these need to be reconsidered. 



SEX DETERMINATION 



Overall Body Size 



Overall body size can provide a good indication of sex, if the 

 individual in question falls above or below the area of overlap 

 between the sexes. For this, the two best indicators are femoral 

 length and femoral head diameter, since the former correlates closely 

 with stature and the latter with body mass. 



The femoral lengths of Gough's Cave 1 (439.0 and 433.0 mm -the 

 difference due largely to differences in neck-shaft angle), fall slightly 

 above an overall European Mesolithic male mean (430.8 ± 19.5 mm, 

 N = 35) and on either side of the mean of a European Mesolithic male 

 sample without the large Muge sample (435.9 ± 20.3 mm, N = 21) 

 (for comparative samples, see Trinkaus, 2003). However, the aver- 



age femoral length of Gough's Cave 1 is only 1.23 standard devia- 

 tions from an overall Mesolithic female mean (407.8 ± 22.9 mm N = 

 21) and only 0.90 standard deviations from the mean of a female 

 sample without the Muge remains (416.2 ±21.9 mm, N = 10). 



Similarly, the sagittal femoral head diameters of Gough's Cave 1 

 (47.7 & 46.3 mm) are close to Mesolithic male means (46.3 ± 2.2 

 mm, N = 32; 47.0 ± 2.6 mm, N = 17 without Muge). Yet, the z-scores 

 of the mean diameter (47.0 mm) relative to the female samples are 

 1 .59 for the full sample (42.7 ± 2.7 mm, N = 1 5) and only 1 .06 for the 

 female sample without Muge (43.7 ± 3.1, N = 8). 



Consequently, these size considerations support a male sex deter- 

 mination for Gough's Cave 1, but they are not conclusive by 

 themselves relative to other skeletally sexed European Mesolithic 

 remains. 



The Pelvis 



The pelvic remains of Gough's Cave 1 present a mixture of male and 

 female features, plus ones that are ambiguous. Yet, the overall 

 impression is that of a male pelvis with some female proportions. 



The greater sciatic notches (Trinkaus, 2003: fig. 2) appear to be 

 intermediate between the classic male semi-circular form and the 

 more open female pattern. In addition, the right ilium, but not the left 

 one, has a clear pre-auricular sulcus. 



The ischiopubic rami (Trinkaus, 2003: fig. 3) are relatively thin 

 and flare ventrally along their medial margins, a generally female 

 feature (see Poulhes, 1947; Phenice, 1969). Yet, the small medio- 

 lateral breadth of the symphyseal body (obturator foramen margin to 

 symphyseal surface), the thickness of the superior pubic ramus, the 

 absence of a subpubic concavity, and the vertically elongated shape 



© The Natural History Museum, 2003 



