Pre-contact human skeletal remains from Useless Loop, Western Australia

A human skull found in 1992 near Useless Loop, Western Australia is described here as being that of a pre-European contact Aboriginal Australian. The skull was that of a gracile male of approximately 50 years of age at the tme of death. Teeth recovered with the skull showed heavy wear, and lesions in the alveolar bone of the jaws suggested that the individual possibly suffered from periodontal disease and, probably, at least one painful abscess at the time of death. The morphology of the individual was similar to that of other, contemporary populations of Aboriginal people from the central region of Western Australia. Determination of the absolute age of a sample of cranial bone by accelerator mass spectrometry yielded a probable age of 2730 400 yr bp. This find therefore represents one of a very few sets of pre-European contact human remains in Western Australia to have been recovered from a known location.