Recommended Further Reading
- Brues, A. M. (1977). People and Races. New York: Macmillan.
- The last book published on human ancestral groups.
- Coon, C. S. (1969). The Living Races of Man. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
- The most complete book published on human ancestral groups.
- Giles, E., Elliot, O. (1962). Race identification from cranial measurements. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 7:147–157.
- This is the seminal work applying discriminant function analysis to distinguishing human ancestral groups.
- Gill, G. W., Gilbert, B. M. (1990). Race identification from the midfacial skeleton: American blacks and whites. In: Gill, G. W., Rhine, J. S., eds. Skeletal Attribution of Race: Methods for Forensic Anthropology. Anthropological Papers 4, Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, Albuquerque, NM.
- This is a good description of the use of midfacial skeletal measurements for distinguishing ancestral group.
- Gilbert, B. M. (1976). Anterior femoral curvature: Its probable basis and utility as a criterion of racial assessment. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 45:601–604.
- This is a further discussion of the value of the femur in attributing ancestral group.
- Hefner, J. T. (2009). Cranial nonmetric variation and estimating ancestry. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 54(5):985–995.
- This article provides the trait frequencies for Whites, Blacks, and Asians.
- Hefner, J. T., Pilloud, M. A., Black, C. J., Anderson, B. E. (2015). Morphoscopic trait expression in “Hispanic” populations. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 60(5):1135–1139.
- This article adds Hispanics to the original Hefner (2009) trait frequencies.
- Stewart, T. D. (1962). Anterior femoral curvature: Its utility for race identification. Human Biology, 34:49–62.
- This is the original article on using the femur to determine ancestry.
- Wescott, D. J. (2005). Population variation in femur subtrochanteric shape. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 50(2):286–293.
- The latest study of ancestry and femoral shape.
Useful Weblinks
- In 2022, the Society of Forensic Anthropologists (SOFA) and the Forensic Technology Center of Excellence (FTCOE) paired together to put on a webinar on Forensic Fractography by Dr. Angi Christensen. Dr. Christensen will discuss material failure and how to detect evidence of failure in bones and what that can tell us about trauma. The webinar is now archived. In order to view the archived webinar, you must sign up for an FTCOE account, but it is free to do so. The link below will guide you to the about page for the webinar you must click the “back to webinar series page” and make sure you have an account.
- https://forensiccoe.org/webinar-2022-forensic-fractography-bone/
For a cool bioarcheological exploration of early gunshot trauma from the 1500s check out this video from the Center of Innovation at Leiden University “The Truth in our bones series”
See the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Teams Fredy Perccerelli discuss the mass graves from the 36 year conflict which killed over 200,000 civilians.
Watch the analysis of the trauma to the skeleton of Richard the III done by the University of Leicester. Richard III was the King of England 1483-1485, he was killed at the battle of Bosworth Field during the final battle of the Roses.
Although they are a bit dated, the FilmRISE series Skeleton Stories shows real forensic anthropologists work real cases. There are 13 episodes to the series.