Talus

Forensic anthropologists work with human skeletal remains to determine identity of unknown individuals and recognize evidence relating to the circumstances of death. They use of a variety of methods to determine aspects of an individual’s biological profile such as sex, age, stature, and ancestry. The methods most commonly used have been peer-reviewed and independently tested; practitioners are confident in and familiar with the established methods. The peer- reviewed and empirically tested methods are also the only ones accepted in court under the Daubert standard for scientific evidence. For ethical and legal reasons, forensic casework involving active investigations (e.g., homicide or positive identification of a John/Jane Doe) cannot be discussed. Forensic anthropologists, unsurprisingly, remain internally focused rather than open to sharing.

The commonly used analytical tools in biological profiling methods include regression equations, component analysis, and phase analysis. Such methods are published in scholarly journals, but each article contains the necessary information (e.g., what measurements to take, what equations to plug them into, and the accuracy and error of resulting estimates) spread throughout an extensive report. Buikstra and Ubelaker’s Standards for data collection from human skeletal remains, the acknowledged comprehensive guide in the field, is almost 20 years old and is not absolute.

However, the integration of the traditions of human osteology with contemporary user-friendly, readily accessible platforms is critical to the growth of forensic anthropology as a field. As some researchers in forensic anthropology trend towards the use of three-dimensional imagers, Elliptical Fourier Analysis, and other new, statistically complex techniques, the path is open to bring older, trusted methods into the twenty-first century. Talus also broadly appeals to