Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

An Exploration Of The Effects Of Taphonomy On Isotope Ratios Of Human Hair, Tiffany Bivens Saul

Doctoral Dissertations

Isotope analyses of human remains have been conducted with growing frequency over the past thirty years in anthropology, in both archaeological and forensic contexts. Analyses of isotope ratios of elements such as carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, and strontium from teeth, bones, and hair have provided information regarding individual diet and geographic movement during different life stages. Hair grows at a predictable rate and provides a serial recording of diet and travel history for the weeks and months just prior to death. What has not been systematically studied is whether postmortem decompositional changes to the body have an effect upon isotope …

The Evaluation And Refinement Of Nonmetric Sex And Ancestry Assessment Methods In Modern Japanese And Thai Individuals, Sean D. Tallman

Doctoral Dissertations

Effective biological profiles in forensic anthropology and bioarchaeology depend on the development, validation, and refinement of population-specific methods. However, most methods were developed in North America on individuals of African and European descent, and it is unlikely that such methods can generate accurate biological profiles for Asian individuals. Moreover, Native Americans have served as biological proxies for Asians due to their distantly shared genetic history, resulting in largely untested assumptions that Native Americans and Asians are homogenous and share nonmetric sexually dimorphic skeletal features and a unique suite of cranial traits that can be used in ancestry assessment.

This study …

Age Estimation With Decision Trees: Testing The Relevance Of 94 Aging Indicators On The William M. Bass Donated Collection, Kevin Benjamin Dominic Hufnagl

Doctoral Dissertations

Anthropologists have been estimating ages-at-death of skeletons for a long time. A variety of different age indicators has been studied and age estimation methods have been developed in an attempt to standardize the process. Even with all the work that has gone into developing age estimation methods, age estimation of mature skeletons is still very imprecise. This research investigates various age indicator definitions and their performance on an elderly skeletal sample. Using 176 individuals from the William M. Bass Donated Collection curated in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, data were collected on age indicators gathered …

Neurocranial Histomorphometrics, Lindsay Hines Trammell

Doctoral Dissertations

Successful development of the biological profile employs a variety of traditional methods. A key disadvantage is the necessity of near complete and proper preservation of target elements to reliably estimate age and sex. Instances lacking traditional gross odonto-skeletal features force anthropologists to rely on bone or dental microscopy.

The majority of relevant histological research has focused primarily on the long bones and estimating age-at-death. One limitation is the insufficient attention to how biomechanical and metabolic factors affect the osteonal remodeling process in long bones and the accuracy of aging techniques. The influence of variation resulting from localized trauma, as well …

If And How Many 'Races'? The Application Of Mixture Modeling To World-Wide Human Craniometric Variation, Bridget Frances Beatrice Algee-Hewitt

Doctoral Dissertations

Studies in human cranial variation are extensive and widely discussed. While skeletal biologists continue to focus on questions of biological distance and population history, group-specific knowledge is being increasingly used for human identification in medico-legal contexts. The importance of this research has been often overshadowed by both philosophic and methodological concerns. Many analyses have been constrained in their scope by the limited availability of representative samples and readily criticized for adopting statistical techniques that require user-guidance and a priori information. A multi-part project is presented here that implements model-based clustering as an alternative approach for population studies using craniometric traits. …