The postmortem fate of osteometric measurements: taphonomic alteration of landmarks and its implication for biological profiling

From Firenze University Press Journal: Archivio per l’Antropologia e la Etnologia

Matteo Borrini, School of Biological and Environmental Sciences — Research Centre of Biological Anthropology, Liverpool John Moores University

Piero Mannucci, Società Italiana di Antropologia ed Etnologia

Satu Valoriani, School of Biological and Environmental Sciences — Research Centre of Biological Anthropology, Liverpool John Moores University

GianPaolo Scalia Tomba, Department of Mathematics, University of Rome Tor Vergata

Osteometry enables the quantification of physical characteristics that define the biological profile of an unknown skeleton, as well as the understanding and appreciation of human variability. Almost all answers to questions about the biological profile (sex, age at death, stature, ancestry, ergonomic and osteobiographic indicators) can utilize metrics characterized by relevance, reliability and validity necessary for scientific evidence (Bono, 2011) in contrast to morphological assessments, generally affected by the subjectivity of the examiner (Kimmerle et al., 2008).Unfortunately, the scientific literature often presents new discriminant function analyses based on the relationship of various metric traits without taking into account the actual availability of the related osteometric landmarks. However, the stress put on the high scientific and forensic value of the data (principles of relevance, reliability and validity) seems to ignore the important issue of data availability (principle of applicability), particularly important not only for scientists but also for forensic practitioners.The lack of discussion of this issue, with rare exceptions (Komar and Potter, 2007), is most likely due to the samples used for anthropological and forensic studies, which are represented by anatomical skeletal collections where most or all elements are preserved. Some notable examples of such collections are the Terry Collection hosted at National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington (Hunt and Albanese, 2005), the WM Bass Donated Skeletal Collection at the University of Tennessee, and the Hamann-Todd Collection housed at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.These collections are based on material from departments of medicine or cadaver donations and have complete and reliable data on each specimen; these circumstances allow the samples to be considered as real anatomical specimens, almost perfectly preserved and are useful to create and test methods for biological profile assessment. While this is the optimal situation for performing morphometric analysis on skeletal remains, it does not represent the daily reality of biological and forensic anthropologists, who must often deal with bodies damaged in different ways by taphonomic events and trauma.For this reason, as part of a larger research project conducted at the University of Tor Vergata (Borrini, 2011), it was decided to statistically evaluate how often the landmarks, and measurements associated with them, can be traced in a real sample and to evaluate the possible theoretical and practical implications.The aim of the study is therefore to identify the bone segments with the highest rate of preservation. This can in turn aid our understanding of the measurements which we can employ in order to create reliable and accurate discriminant functions that can be used for biological profiling.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/aae-2340

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