The missing human postcranial bones from Border Cave, South Africa

Archaeological debris and human skeletal remains from Border Cave (BC) have played prominent roles in interpretations of behavioural and morphological adaptations during the Middle Stone Age (MSA) of southern Africa. However, nagging questions persist about the context and presumed antiquity of some of these human remains, as Later Stone Age (LSA) and Iron Age deposits are also represented in the cave. A pair of human femora and tibiae were recovered in 1941–1942 from the same guano mining dump in the cave from which the well-known human cranium (BC 1) and mandible (BC 2) were extracted. Several measurements of the long bones were recorded by H.B.S. Cooke and colleagues in 1945, but the bones were subsequently lost. They present an interesting set of metrical contrasts. The pilastric and cnemic indices of the BC bones most closely resemble those of South African LSA Khoe-San males, who were mobile hunter-gatherers. However, the BC femur is notably longer than any LSA Khoe-San homologue and most closely resembles the femora of recent Zulu males. It seems likely that the BC bones derived from an Iron Age individual, as comparatively tall statures have been reported for South African Iron Age skeletons, and their pilastric, meric and cnemic indices also overlap substantially with the ranges of the LSA population sample. The missing femora and tibiae add emphasis to questions about the MSA antiquity of the other human bones recovered from the Border Cave mining dump. Significance: Human remains from Border Cave have played prominent roles in interpretations of morphological adaptation during the Middle Stone Age, but there are questions about the context and antiquity of some of them. A pair of femora and tibiae were recovered from the same guano mining dump in the cave that yielded a human cranium and mandible. The long bones have been lost, but metrical data recorded for them suggest they may be from an Iron Age individual. As such, they add to the questions surrounding the context and antiquity of the other human bones from the dump.