Disentangling Cro-Magnon: A multiproxy approach to reassociate lower limb skeletal remains and to determine the biological profiles of the adult individuals

Cro-Magnon is one of the most famous archeological sites in the World, but few scholars are aware that the human remains from this shelter have been commingled since 1868 and that only one comprehensive attempt to reassociate the bones has been published, more than fifty years ago. The aim of this article is to present the results of a multiproxy approach applied in order to reassociate the main bones of the lower limbs (including the pelvis) of the adults from Cro-Magnon. We used a classical approach (i.e. the study of size, morphology, and surface alterations of the bones), combined with tools from virtual anthropology, namely maximum length estimations, virtual test of morphometrical similarities between possible pairs, virtual test of articular congruence, and visual comparisons of cortical thickness of long bones. From the 26 bones from the lower limb under study, 25 were associated with three individuals, named here Alpha (i.e. Cro-Magnon 1, an old man), Beta (an old woman), and Gamma (an old man). This study increases the number of bones attributed to Alpha and Beta and significantly changes the bone assemblage for the third adult.