A preliminary investigation of the cranial breakage patterns of the late Middle Pleistocene crania from Apidima Cave, Greece

Abstract

The Apidima site is located in close proximity to the village Areopolis on the coast of the Mani peninsula in the southern Peloponnese, Greece (Harvati et al., 2009; Harvati, 2016, 2022). The site consists of five caves (A, B, C, D, and E), which are located directly on the coast and can today only be reached by boat. The caves are filled with sediments from the Middle and Late Pleistocene, which are eroding out of the caves (Pitsios, 1999; Harvati et al., 2011; Bräuer et al., 2019). In the late 1970s, a team of researchers from the Museum of Anthropology of the School of Medicine, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, unearthed two incomplete hominin crania [Apidima 1 (or LAO1/S1) and Apidima 2 (or LAO1/S2)] from the breccia of the cave wall of cave A. The remains were excavated en bloc and then prepared in the laboratory to free them mechanically from the surrounding breccia (Pitsios, 1999). Both crania are fragmentary, but the breccia matrix still holds the fragments in place and together.