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PUBLISHED VERSION Ingrid Sierp, Maciej Henneberg Can Ancestry Be PUBLISHED VERSION Ingrid Sierp, Maciej Henneberg Can ancestry be consistently determined from the skeleton? Anthropological Review, 2015; 78(1):21-31 © 2015 Polish Anthropological Society. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License. (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) Published version available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/anre-2015-0002 PERMISSIONS http://degruyteropen.com/you/journal-author/copyright-and-license-statement/ http://degruyteropen.com/you/journal-author/repository-policy/ 18 May 2016 http://hdl.handle.net/2440/97180 Ingrid Sierp, Maciej Henneberg Can ancestry be consistently determined from skeleton? ANTHROPOLOGICAL REVIEW • Vol. 78 (1), 21–31 (2015) ANTHROPOLOGICAL REVIEW Available online at: www.degruyter.com Journal homepage: www.ptantropologiczne.pl Can ancestry be consistently determined from the skeleton? Ingrid Sierp, Maciej Henneberg Biological Anthropology and Comparative Anatomy Research Unit, School of Medical Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide 5005, Australia ABSTRACT: Although the concept of race has been thoroughly criticised in biological anthropology, forensic anthropology still uses a number of methods to determine the ‘race’ of a skeleton. The methods must be evaluated to see how effective they are given large individual variation. This study used 20 cases of skeletons of varied provenance to test whether the nine published methods of ‘race’ determination, using a range of various approaches, were able to consistently identify the ethnic origin. No one individual was identified as belonging to just one ‘major racial class’, e.g. European, meaning that complete consistency across all nine methods was not observed. In 14 cases (70%), various methods identified the same individ- ual as belonging to all three racial classes. This suggests that the existing methods for the determination of ‘race’ are compromised. The very concept of ‘race’ is inapplicable to variation that occurs between pop- ulations only in small ways and the methods are limited by the geographic population from which their discriminant functions or observations of morphological traits were derived. Methods of multivariate linear discriminant analysis, e.g. CRANID, are supposed to allocate an individual skull to a specific population rather than a ‘major race’. In our analysis CRANID did not produce convincing allocations of individual skeletons to specific populations. The findings of this study show that great caution must be taken when attempting to ascertain the ‘race’ of a skeleton, as the outcome is not only dependent on which skeletal sites are available for assessment, but also the degree to which the unknown skeleton’s population of origin has been investigated. KEY WORDS: human skeletal identification; race; discriminant function analysis; non-metric variation Introduction due to the nature of human variability (Kaszycka et al. 2009). Some elements The concept of assigning skeletal re- of variability can be attributed to genet- mains into a defined ‘race’ is problematic ic drift in small populations (Henneberg Original Article: Received: September 4, 2014; Accepted for publication: November 19, 2014 DOI: 10.1515/anre-2015-0002 © 2015 Polish Anthropological Society Brought to you by | University of Adelaide Barr Smith Library Authenticated Download Date | 5/18/16 3:57 AM 22 Ingrid Sierp, Maciej Henneberg 2006; Rhine 1993) or to natural selection for determining ‘race’ from skeletal re- in antecedent populations, however, with mains. Other such studies exist, however the increasing levels of migration and the their methods are comparatively similar resultant gene flow, levels of variability to those mentioned previously. In this of specific racial identifiers are increasing study nine methods of ‘race’ determina- within local populations. In general, the tion, chosen to represent their common concept of ‘race’ is ill suited to the study types, have been applied to 20 cases of of human variation because this varia- skeletons requiring racial identification tion is quasi-continuous and most of it as if they were a subject of forensic in- occurs among individuals in the same vestigation. Thus each of the skeletons populations while only about a quarter is to be considered a separate case. The is attributable to geographic distribution ability of the nine methods to consist- of people (Brace 2005; Henneberg 2010; ently determine the ‘race’ of a skeleton Lewontin 1976). Anthropological meth- was evaluated. ods available to identify a race are derived from specific skeletal samples represent- Method ing particular geographic groups. Thus, discriminant functions or morphologi- The nine methods (Table 1) were ap- cal categories recommended by a meth- plied to 20 skeletons held by The Ray od may not be adequate to identify the Last Laboratory at The University of Ad- racial affinity of a skeleton of unknown elaide. The origin of these skeletons is provenance (Iscan 1983; Iscan & Steyn unknown, however, they are most likely 1999; Patriquin et al. 2002). Some mem- to come from two sources; (1) donated bers of a particular ‘race’ may share some skeletons of Australians of European de- features within a population, such as scent with a slight possibility of Austral- the presence of a wide nasal aperture in ian Aboriginal admixture, and (2) teach- African Americans; however, individual ing skeletons bought by the University variability can often cause an overlap of from India early in the 20th century. such features with other ‘races’. The dis- The ability of the methods to consist- crimination ability of available methods ently determine the ‘race’ of an individual should be investigated in skeletal sam- was evaluated in three different ways. (1) ples from outside the geographic popu- Counting in how many cases the major- lations, for which the original methods ity of methods gave the same result, i.e. were derived, to be able to assess their at least five of the nine methods consist- general usability. In the literature there ently identified the skeleton as belonging is a wide variety of methods used to as- to the same ‘race’. (2) Counting in how certain the ancestry of skeletal samples. many cases results were fully ambiguous, These methods used craniometric (Giles i.e. the skeleton was identified as belong- & Elliot 1962; Gill 1984; Wright 2008) ing to one ‘race’ by the same number of and morphologic (Bass 1995; Brues methods as belonging to the other ‘race’. 1990; Gill 1998; Rhine 1993) assess- (3) Counting in how many cases meth- ments of the skull and metric assess- ods identify the skeleton as belonging at ment of the pelvis (Iscan 1983; Patriquin the same time to all three of the ‘racial et al. 2002). These skeletal elements are classes’, with at least one method in each commonly accepted as the gold standard class. The above categories are not mu- Brought to you by | University of Adelaide Barr Smith Library Authenticated Download Date | 5/18/16 3:57 AM Can ancestry be consistently determined from skeleton? 23 Table 1. Methods used for the determination of ancestry in this study Method Description of method Possible Results Collection Used Author & Date Number 1 3× craniofacial indices White or Black/ Indi- Terry collection, Smithso- Gill 1984 an/Eskimo nian Institution as well as secondary sources 2 2× cranial discrimi- White, Black or Terry collection, St. Louis Giles & Elliot 1962 nant functions American Indian Todd collection, Cleve- land 3 11× morphological Caucasoid, Mongoloid Meta-analysis of previous Bass 1995 traits of skull or Negroid studies 4 20× morphological Caucasoid, Mongoloid Meta-analysis of previous Rhine 1993 traits of skull or Negroid studies 5 12× morphological White, Black or East Meta-analysis of previous Gill 1998 traits of skull Asian/American Indi- studies an/Polynesian 6 Morphological study of Caucasoid, Mongoloid Peabody Museum Col- Brues 1990 the nasal root or Negroid lection 7 4× Pelvic discriminant White or Black Terry collection, Smithso- Iscan 1983 functions nian Institution 8 4× Pelvic discriminant White or Black Dissection specimens, Patriquin et al. functions University of Pretoria 2002 Raymond Dart collection, Johannesburg 9 Multivariate statistics Many populations Howells’ public data set CRANID by Wright on cranial dimensions 2008 tually exclusive except for (1) and (2). the value ‘1’; an outcome of ‘White’ was Authors of each method gave somewhat given the value ‘2’; to increase precision different names for the ‘racial categories’ of analysis, the ‘Other’ class was divid- into which their method is supposed to ed into an outcome of ‘Mongoloid’ that classify and individual. For purposes of was given the value ‘3’ and all other out- comparing the methods we have grouped comes were given the value ‘4’. Consist- their results into three general classes; ency of the nine methods was then an- Black, White and Other. ‘Black’ includes alysed using a non-parametric One-way any determination pertaining to Sub-Sa- ANOVA (Kruskal-Wallis test). Inter-cor- haran African ancestry, ‘White’ includes relation between the nine methods was any determination pertaining to Euro- also analysed using the non-parametric pean ancestry, while ‘Other’ includes Spearman test. any determination that is pertaining to Asian, Amerindian, Indigenous Austral- Results ian and Oceanian ancestry. Outcomes of ‘racial’ determination Table 2 shows that no one individual was were transformed into numerical val- identified as belonging to only one ‘ra- ues for the purposes
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