Silvia M Bello

• PhD
• Researcher at Natural History Museum, London

The use of human braincases as drinking cups and containers has extensive historic and ethnographic documentation, but archaeological examples are extremely rare. In the Upper Palaeolithic of western Europe, cut-marked and broken human bones are widespread in the Magdalenian (∼15 to 12,000 years BP) and skull-cup preparation is an element of this t...

Cut-marks on fossil bones and teeth are an important source of evidence in the reconstruction of ancient butchery practices. The analysis of butchery marks has allowed archaeologists to interpret aspects of past subsistence strategies and the behavior of early humans. Recent advances in optical scanning microscopy allow detailed measurements of cut...

Taphonomic studies of osteoarchaeological human assemblages have mainly focused on establishing recognisable markers that allow us to discriminate between humanly induced modifications from natural causes, or how to differentiate cannibalism from secondary burial. Less attention has been dedicated to recognise specific taphonomic patterns associate...

The human cranium is probably the most common single anatomical element manipulated after the death of the individual. However, it is not uncommon to find isolated crania for which it is difficult to unequivocally determine the nature of the deposition, either intentional or natural. In order to establish whether naturally deposited and intentional...

Non-masticatory labial striations on human anterior teeth are a form of cultural dental wear well recorded throughout the Pleistocene, which has been interpreted as resulting from the use of the mouth as a ‘third hand’ when processing different materials during daily activities, such as cutting meat or working hides with stone tools. Non-masticator...

The use of bone tools by early humans has provided valuable insights into their technology, behaviour and cognitive abilities. However, identifying minimally modified or unshaped Palaeolithic osseous tools can be challenging, particularly when they are mixed with bones altered by natural taphonomic processes. This has hampered the study of key tech...

The imprint of human actions on mammal remains from archaeological sites is often fragmented and attenuated due to post-mortem processes, which add to the challenge of distinguishing human from natural modifications in faunal assemblages. Identifying minimally-worked bone tools poses a particular challenge when they are mixed with bones that have be...

The exceptional survival of Middle Pleistocene wooden spears at Schöningen (Germany) and Clacton-on-Sea (UK) provides tantalizing evidence for the widespread use of organic raw materials by early humans. At Clacton, less well-known organic artefacts include modified bones that were identified by the Abbé Henri Breuil in the 1920s. Some of these pie...

Genetic investigations of Upper Palaeolithic Europe have revealed a complex and transformative history of human population movements and ancestries, with evidence of several instances of genetic change across the European continent in the period following the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Concurrent with these genetic shifts, the post-LGM period is c...

Our knowledge of the recolonization of north-west Europe at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum depends to a large extent on finds from Gough’s Cave (Somerset, UK). Ultra-high resolution radiocarbon determinations suggest that the cave was occupied seasonally by Magdalenian hunters for perhaps no more than two or three human generations, centred on...

A decorated bone object adds to the mounting evidence that Neanderthals were capable of advanced behavioural complexity and could produce artistic representations.

The Horse Butchery Site: A high resolution record of Lower Palaeolithic hominin behaviour at Boxgrove, UK. The Boxgrove Horse Butchery Site represents a significant discovery, preserving a single landsurface associated with tight clusters of flint artefacts and the butchered remains of a large female horse, sealed under intertidal silts. This volu...

The Upper Palaeolithic is characterised by the appearance of iconographic expressions most often depicting animals, including anthropomorphic forms, and geometric signs. The Late Upper Palaeolithic Magdalenian saw a flourishing of such depictions, encompassing cave art, engraving of stone, bone and antler blanks and decoration of tools and weapons....

The presence of skull cups (bowls made from human calvaria) is considered evidence of the ritualistic treatment of human bodies. These artefacts are characterised by careful manufacturing which can be taphonomically observed in bone surface modifications (BSM) as cut marks and percussion marks. These BSM show morphological similarities across Upper...

Perforated batons, usually made from a segment of antler and formed of a sub-cylindrical shaft and at least one perforation, have been documented across Europe from sites throughout the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic. The function of perforated batons is still debated. We present here three Magdalenian perforated batons from the site of Gough’s C...

Archaeological records of the treatment of human skulls for ceremonial or cult purposes appear at the end of Palaeolithic and are shown in different ways, being able to identify through the taphonomic modifications. According to this, the presence of skull cups (bowls from human calvaria) is currently considered evidence of ritualistic treatment of...

Cut marks, scrape marks, knapping marks, percussion damage and engravings are examples of humanly produced modifications made on the surface of bones, antlers and/or teeth during defleshing, disarticulation, filleting, surface cleaning or when modifying these organic materials into objects and tools. These traces are direct indications of human act...

The question of cognitive complexity in early Homo sapiens in North Africa is intimately tied to the emergence of the Aterian culture (~145 ka). One of the diagnostic indicators of cognitive complexity is the presence of specialised bone tools, however significant uncertainty remains over the manufacture and use of these artefacts within the Ateria...

In 2006, six isolated hominin teeth were excavated from Middle Stone Age (MSA) deposits at the Magubike rockshelter in southern Tanzania. They comprise two central incisors, one lateral incisor, one canine, one third premolar, and one fourth premolar. All are fully developed and come from the maxilla. None of the teeth are duplicated, so they may r...

Additional information on ESR methods. (DOCX)

Recent analyses of archaeological collections have suggested that the frequency, location and micro-morphometric characteristics of cut marks produced when cleaning partially decayed bodies are significantly different from butchery of fresh bodies. The present study attempts to verify this hypothesis by performing incisions into pig body parts at d...

The end of the last Ice Age in Britain ( c. 11500 BP) created major disruption to the biosphere. Open habitats were succeeded by more wooded landscapes, and changes occurred to the fauna following the abrupt disappearance of typical glacial herd species, such as reindeer and horse (Conneller & Higham 2015). Understanding the impact of these changes...

Cut-marked and broken human bones are a recurrent feature of Magdalenian (~17–12,000 years BP, uncalibrated dates) European sites. Human remains at Gough’s Cave (UK) have been modified as part of a Magdalenian mortuary ritual that combined the intensive processing of entire corpses to extract edible tissues and the modification of skulls to produce...

Tables 1–4, Type of incision, length and micro-morphometric profile values, taken at the incision’s midpoint, of each engraved incision on the human radius (M54074), two artefacts engraved bones (BS27 3QF) and filleting marks on human and non-human remains from Gough’s Cave. Length of the incision (L), width of the incision at the surface (WIS), wi...

3-Dimensional Alicona image, Alicona profile (with and without measurements) and description of each engraving mark on the human radius (M54074). (DOCX)

Dating the earliest human occupations in Western Europe and reconstructing links with climatic and environmental constraints is a central issue in Quaternary studies. Amongst the discovery of Palaeolithic artefacts ascribed to the Early Pleistocene in southeast Britain and central France the Somme Basin, where the Acheulean type-site Amiens Saint-A...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1098/rsos.160328.].

In 1912, palaeontologist Arthur Smith Woodward and amateur antiquarian and solicitor Charles Dawson announced the discovery of a fossil that supposedly provided a link between apes and humans: Eoanthropus dawsoni (Dawson’s dawnman). The publication generated huge interest from scientists and the general public. However, ‘Piltdown man’s’ initial cel...

Objectives: Humanly induced modifications on human and non-human bones from four archaeological sites of known funerary rituals (one interpreted as cannibalism and three interpreted as funerary defleshing and disarticulation after a period of decay) were analyzed to ascertain whether macromorphological and micromorphological characteristics of cut...

Post-mortem manipulations of the body were common at Mesolithic–Neolithic sites along the Danube River. During assessment of disarticulated human remains from Lepenski Vir, an unusual set of incisions (notches) were observed on the diaphysis of a human left radius along with a few cut-marks. Very few studies have attempted to distinguish clearly th...

The use of soft (bone, antler, tooth and wood) hammers and retouchers is a key innovation in early stone tool technology, first appearing in the archaeological record with Lower Palaeolithic handaxe industries (e.g. Boxgrove, UK ∼500 ka). Although organic knapping tools were undoubtedly a component of early human toolkits and are essential, for exa...

The Lower Paleolithic locality of Schöningen 13 II-4 is famous for the discovery of wooden spears found amongst the butchered remains of numerous horses and other large herbivores. Although the spears have attracted the most interest, other aspects of the associated artifact assemblage have received less attention. Here we describe an extraordinary...

Reassessment of archives, early publications and the auditing of museum collections have often led to the discovery or rediscovery of long-forgotten specimens (e.g. Hollmann et at. 1986: 330; Fainer & Man-Estier 2011: 506, 520). The combination of initial poor recognition, insufcient scientic analysis and inadequate storage conditions, can cause th...

Distinguishing cannibalism from ritualistic practices involving defleshing and disarticulation of a body without consumption of any human tissue (such as secondary burial and trophy taking) commonly relies on the analysis of skeletal element representation and the identification of bone modifications (cut marks, bone breakage patterns, human tooth...

Cut-marks are produced when a knife (of flint, metal etc.) strikes the surface of a bone. Cutmarked human remains are surprisingly common in prehistoric contexts. Ascertaining the interval between an organism’s death and the production of cut-marks often remains uncertain, relying on indirect evidence. New 3-Dimensional technology (the Alicona Infi...

Here we report the recovery of a human tooth, radiocarbon dated to the Neolithic period, from Ash Tree Shelter, near Whitwell in Derbyshire, United Kingdom. The tooth bears scratches on the labial surface of the crown. The morphology and position of these scratches suggest they were produced ante mortem (during the life of the individual) by a ston...

This paper presents evidence of the discovery of a new Middle Pleistocene site in central southern England, with undisturbed evidence of hominin occupation well-dated to an interstadial towards the end of Marine Isotope Stage 8, c. 250,000 BP. The site consists of a preserved remnant of a river terrace and its alluvial floodplain overlain by chalk-...

In 2001, a collection of skeletal material was donated to the Natural History Museum, London, by the Royal College of Surgeons, London. It consisted of boxes discovered among the personal belongings of Sir Arthur Keith. This paper describes the work undertaken to identify and document the human skeletal material in the Keith Collection. The study i...

Evidence of Neanderthals using bear remains as retouchers is rare. In the sedimentary unit 5 of Scladina Cave (Belgium; Weichselian Early Glacial, MIS 5d to 5b), twenty-six bone retouchers have been discovered. Among these, six have been made from cave bear bones (four from a femur and two from two tibiae). The presence of lithic splinters, still e...

The Middle Palaeolithic has gone through many climate changes where warmer and colder phases alternated. These changes modified the plant cover, fauna who lived in and, consequently, relationships between Neanderthals and their environment. This environment was also affected by the topography that includes, for the NW of Europe, vast plains bordere...

At the Mesolithic-Neolithic sites of Padina, Lepenski Vir, Vlasac, and Hajdučka Vodenica (Serbia) numerous disarticulated human remains were uncovered, along with articulated burials. Suggestions of secondary burial practices have been made, but without understanding the burial pathways of human remains. This paper presents the results of taphonomi...

Reassessment of archives, early publications and the auditing of museum collections have often led to the discovery and rediscovery of long forgotten specimens. The combination of initial poor recognition, scarce scientific analysis and inadequate storage conditions, may inexplicably cause the loss to science of important archaeological specimens....

An isolated adult human ulna fragment recovered from the ‘black mould’ layer of Kent's Cavern by William Pengelly in 1866 exhibits a series of stone tool cut marks. The specimen has been directly AMS 14C-dated to 7314–7075 cal bc (OxA-20588: 8185 ± 38 bp) and may be from the same individual as a maxilla fragment dated to the same period. The cut ma...

Cut-marks observed on fossil bones and teeth are an important source of evidence in the reconstruction of prehistoric butchery strategies. Micromorphological analyses of cut-marks have been shown to further the interpretation of hominin behavioural patterns. However, to date, the microscopic investigation of cut-marks has been limited to two-dimens...

Grotte des Pigeons at Taforalt, north-east Morocco, is well known for a large assemblage of Iberomaurusian (Epipalaeolithic) skeletons, possibly representing the earliest and most extensively used prehistoric cemetery in North Africa. New archaeological excavations carried out in 2005 and 2006 revealed further human remains in a largely undisturbed...

This study examines sex differences in infant mortality in Spitalfields, London, and the estimated contribution of endogenous and exogenous factors to neonatal and infant mortality using the biometric model from 1750 to 1839. There was a marked decline in the risk of death during infancy and the neonatal period for both sexes during the study perio...

Cut-marks and percussion marks on human skull-cups from Gough's Cave. (EPS)

Cut-marks and percussion marks on human neurocranial bones from Gough's Cave. (EPS)

Cut-marks and percussion marks on human facial bones from Gough's Cave. (EPS)

Cut-marks and percussion marks on human mandibles from Gough's Cave. (EPS)

In 1995-1996 two isolated hominin lower incisors were found at the middle Pleistocene site of Boxgrove in England, with Lower Palaeolithic archaeology. Boxgrove 2 is a permanent lower right central incisor and Boxgrove 3 a permanent lower left lateral incisor. They were found separately, but close to one another and appear to belong to the same ind...

In this study, we analyse the three-dimensional micromorphology of cut marks on fossil mammal remains from a ∼0.5 million year old Acheulean butchery site at Boxgrove (West Sussex, southern England), and make comparisons with cut marks inflicted during the experimental butchery of a roe deer (Capreolus caproelus) using a replica handaxe. Morphologi...

Cutmarks found on the fossilised bones of butchered animals provide direct evidence for the procurement of meat through technological means. As such, they hold some of the oldest available information on cognitive ability and behaviour in human evolution. Here we present a new method that allows a three-dimensional reconstruction of cutmark morphol...

In order to evaluate the level of periosteal reaction on an isolated bone, an affected individual or an ancient population, we propose a new quantification method, taking into account simultaneously (i) the degree of periosteal reaction (Periosteal Reaction Stage, PRS), (ii) the degree of anatomical preservation and representation (Anatomical Prese...

In order to evaluate the level of periosteal reaction on an isolated bone, an affected individual or an ancient population, we propose a new quantification method, taking into account simultaneously (i) the degree of periosteal reaction (Periosteal Reaction Stage, PRS), (ii) the degree of anatomical preservation and representation (Anatomical Prese...

Palaeodemographical studies are founded on the assumption that the sex and age distribution of the skeletal sample reflects the constitution of the original population. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that the type and amount of information that may be derived from osteoarchaeological collections are related to the state of preservation...

L'étude de la collection ostéoarchéologique du site médiéval de St-Estève-Le-Pont concerne des aspects d'anthropologie funéraire (modalités d'inhumation, analyse spatiale) et d'anthropologie biologique (résultats paléodémographiques, biométriques, paléopathologiques et paléoépidémiologiques). Elle présente l'avantage d'un suivi anthropologique du t...

L'étude de la collection ostéoarchéologique du site médiéval de St-Estève-Le-Pont concerne des aspects d'anthropologie funéraire (modalités d'inhumation, analyse spatiale) et d'anthropologie biologique (résultats paléodémographiques, biométriques, paléopathologiques et paléoépidémiologiques). Elle présente l'avantage d'un suivi anthropologique du t...

Les gestes funéraires. Etat de conservation du matériel ostéologique. Des particularités démographiques propres au site des Fédons. Recherches de liens de parenté et données sur l'état sanitaire et social.

Bone remains in osteological collections are not a reflection of a living population, only a sample of the original population. Differential states of preservation related to the individuals’ age can result in under-representation of certain categories (especially very young children). Such under-representation produces a bias in the reconstruction...

Bone remains in osteological collections are not a reflection of a living population, only a sample of the original population. Differential states of preservation related to the individuals’ age can result in under-representation of certain categories (especially very young children). Such under-representation produces a bias in the reconstruction...

Objectives The aim of this study was to assess the tuberculosis-related mortality rate in four major French cities (Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Montpellier) between 1751 and 1939. Material and method Data were collected from weekly and monthly statistics published in magazines and books. Results Results show that there was an inversion in the distr...

The return of some infectious disease has stimulated specialists to study historical aspects of human infections. A major model for this study is Yersinia pestis which has had a great impact on human demography due to the fact that it is highly contagious and has a high mortality rate similar to that of the most lethal viral pathogenic agents. We c...

Resume. — La fievre puerperale est connue des medecins mais aussi des historiens-demographes par son impact sur les structures demographiques et sociales des populations occidentales du passe. Le caractere epidemique de cette maladie eliminait brutalement des meres venant de mettre au monde. Cette mortalite maternelle particuliere a ete un phenomen...