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The remains that typically compose the human fossil record often bear cracks, damage, and deformations. The recent rapid development of 'virtual anthropology' has provided innovative tools to manage, study, and preserve cultural and natural heritage. Such tools include computerized tomography (CT), laser scanning, photogrammetry, 3D imaging, and rapid prototyping. These approaches can contribute to any archaeological context from the discovery of artefacts to research, preservation, and dissemination. 3D imaging techniques can substitute physical intervention with a virtual protocol to restore the original shape of a fossil specimen. In a similar way, digital morphological information can be recovered using data preserved even on a fragment through the use of 3D comparative samples. Here we present an extended and updated review of the most innovative protocols in virtual anthropology, also applicable in other fields such as natural history and cultural heritage studies, through the description of recent cast studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cattle pastoralism is an important trait of African cultures. Ethnographic studies describe the central role played by domestic cattle within many societies, highlighting its social and ideological value well beyond its mere function as ‘walking larder’. Historical depth of this African legacy has been repeatedly assessed in an archaeological perspective, mostly emphasizing a continental vision. Nevertheless, in-depth site-specific studies, with a few exceptions, are lacking. Despite the long tradition of a multi-disciplinary approach to the analysis of pastoral systems in Africa, rarely do early and middle Holocene archaeological contexts feature in the same area the combination of settlement, ceremonial and rock art features so as to be multi-dimensionally explored: the Messak plateau in the Libyan central Sahara represents an outstanding exception. Known for its rich Pleistocene occupation and abundant Holocene rock art, the region, through our research, has also shown to preserve the material evidence of a complex ritual dated to the Middle Pastoral (6080–5120 BP or 5200–3800 BC). This was centred on the frequent deposition in stone monuments of disarticulated animal remains, mostly cattle. Animal burials are known also from other African contexts, but regional extent of the phenomenon, state of preservation of monuments, and associated rock art make the Messak case unique. GIS analysis, excavation data, radiocarbon dating, zooarchaeological and isotopic (Sr, C, O) analyses of animal remains, and botanical information are used to explore this highly formalized ritual and the lifeways of a pastoral community in the Holocene Sahara. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]