An historical skull collection and its use in forensic odontology and anthropology

Abstract

The Institute of Forensic Medicine, Copenhagen, houses a collection of historical skulls of unclear origin, marked with a general geographic or “racial descriptor”. Would these historical skulls be of any value for the forensic odontologist and anthropologist concerned with teaching and casework? We tried to clarify this question by recording non-metric dental traits and by performing craniometric analyses.

A morphological and morphometric investigation of anatomical/dental traits in 80 adult skulls was performed. For each skull four non-metric dental traits using the ASU-System and three non-metric cranial traits were recorded. Nineteen cranial measures were also taken following the FORDISC programme manual. The non-metrical data were tabulated as frequencies, and the metric data were entered in the FORDISC programme. Observed non-metric trait frequencies were compared with published data. The FORDISC programme computed a discriminatory analysis for each skull and thereby assigned the skull to the most probable ethnic category.

The results for the non-metric traits showed that the traits generally followed the expected frequencies in 80% of the cases. The FORDISC programme correctly assigned ethnicity based on skull measurements in overall 70% of the cases. It was found that this historical collection does show expected dental non-metric and craniometric traits and the collection may be of value in forensic casework in terms of comparison and for teaching purposes.