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Despite developing prior to the appearance of secondary sexual characteristics of the skeleton, the permanent dentition exhibits sexual dimorphism. Therefore, teeth can serve as a means to estimate sex assigned at birth even in young individuals. This project takes a large global sample of maximum dimensions of the crown as well as measurements of the crown at the cervix to explore sexual dimorphism. Dimorphism is noted in teeth throughout the dental arcade, particularly in the canines. We provide sectioning points as well as the probability of correct classification (ranging from 50.9% to 81.3%) for each measurement to aid the practitioner in sex estimation from the dentition. This research provides a method to estimate sex without arbitrary population specifications. We argue for a global approach that incorporates more population variation to remove the need to estimate “ancestry,” (which in actuality is translated to a social race category) and therefore does not force sexual dimorphism‐related variation into these mutable and ambiguous categories. Further, this paper demonstrates the utility of the dentition as an additional indicator to aid with the estimation of sex assigned at birth in forensic anthropology. The goal of this research is to better understand the expression of sexual dimorphism across the skeleton in a global context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The medicolegal system relies on the ability of experts and non‐experts alike to make judgments about expertise and use those judgments to reach consequential decisions. Given the lack of standard criteria, mandatory certification, or licensure for establishing expertise required to practice forensic anthropology and testify as an expert witness, we sought to understand how individuals assess and identify expertise in forensic anthropology by using a social science tool called the Imitation Game. This tool assesses immersion in a specific area of study via discourse, with the premise that some individuals lacking expertise themselves imitate or attempt to pass as experts. For this project we recruited volunteers with varying expertise in forensic anthropology to participate in interviews which asked questions about the practice and structure of the discipline. Those interviews were transcribed, anonymized, and evaluated by other recruited individuals with varying expertise in forensic anthropology. Results found that judges who were experts in forensic anthropology performed better than non‐expert judges in determining who was not an expert in forensic anthropology based on their anonymized responses; however, nearly half of the non‐experts were still able to pass as experts in forensic anthropology. The difficulties in assessing expertise based on discourse interactions demonstrates the value and need for well‐defined credentials and mandatory certification to practice forensic anthropology. This study demonstrates that accurately identifying expertise in forensic anthropology may be challenging for both experts and non‐experts, especially when relying solely on interactional expertise rather than formal assessments of competency which directly elucidate contributory expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This piece, a conversation on the changing ethical obligations of forensic anthropology in the twenty-first century, arose out of myriad societal and disciplinary upheavals, including: insufficient ethical policies and recent debates about advocacy, activism, and antiracism in the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS); ongoing discussions on the intersection of forensic anthropology with important social movements (e.g., Black Lives Matter [BLM], LGBTQ+, immigrant advocacies); and critical examinations of our skeletal curation practices and our colonialist past and present. For example, more senior-level anthropologists were not involved in this discussion, and all of us who participated share the perspective that forensic anthropology should expand ethical practices to address social issues - with advocacy, activism, and antiracism playing critical roles. We started with several virtual discussions and living documents that identified two overarching themes that, we contend, require urgent responses from our field: (1) defining modern-day ethics in forensic anthropology; and (2) identifying the role(s) of advocacy, activism, and antiracism in forensic anthropology. For our advocacy, activism, and antiracism theme (2), we posed and answered the following two questions: (a) In what ways are advocacy, activism, and antiracism I essential i to the ethical practice of forensic anthropology?. [Extracted from the article]

While the Anthropology Section of the AAFS recently implemented a student liaison position to amplify student voices and issues within the section, the entire academy has not equally embraced the role of students. Testimonial "Though I can claim an immigrant identity across three countries since birth, never had I felt more othered as an immigrant than in forensic anthropology or academia generally. While these statistics show that immigrants participate heavily in society, there is no demographic data available on immigrants within forensic anthropology, whether as students or professionals, although, anecdotally, this number is likely to be small. Three in four patents from the top ten patent-producing US universities have at least one immigrant inventor (Partnership for a New American Economy 2012), and one in four new companies are created by immigrant entrepreneurs (Blanding 2016). Immigrant students may face special concerns with regards to admission, higher tuition rates, financial aid eligibility, harassment from professors and fellow students, and forced return to their home country upon graduating. [Extracted from the article]

"A field that is unable to distinguish the proper from the improper, the ethical from the unethical, must tolerate all behaviors equally, since no neutral principle exists for accepting some and condemning others. As stated earlier, both reports found that Dr. Mann and Dr. Monge exhibited poor judgment; however, this conduct did not violate professional, ethical, or legal standards. C.S.A. §5510), this has a two-year statute of limitations, which the Tucker Law Group argued would not apply to Dr. Mann (as he was only responsible for the remains from 1985 to 2001, when he retired) or Dr. Monge (because she was only responsible for the remains from 2001 to 2019) (Tucker Law Group 2021, 77). The Tucker Law Group notes that the ethical code of the Society of American Archaeologists (SAA) is aspirational and has no principles that "relate specifically to the custody and use of the unidentified MOVE remains by either Monge or Mann" (Tucker Law Group 2021, 77). [Extracted from the article]

Objectives: There are currently no baseline data regarding the amount and types of case reports produced by forensic anthropologists. This research fills that gap by providing data on caseloads of practicing forensic anthropologists and identifying variables that may contribute to amount and type of casework. Materials and methods: A survey was distributed to practicing forensic anthropologists (n = 364) to explore number of case reports written and possible influential factors. Questions included demographic information, employment type, institution where master's degree or PhD were obtained, type of reports written, professional organization membership, certification, graduate research focus, among others. Data were analyzed using summary statistics, a random forest model, network analysis, and structural equation modeling. Results: The mean number of sole‐authored skeletal analysis reports per year was 12.33 and field recovery reports was 2 per year. Statistical analyses identified several variables influencing case loads which included: number of fieldwork reports per year, current employment, total number of cases analyzed, age, publication record, and institution of doctoral degree. Network analyses revealed that individuals in academic settings tended to have a bioarchaeological research focus from their graduate work, whereas those in an applied setting had a focus on forensic anthropology. Further, degree institution influenced employment type. Discussion/conclusions: These data address expectations for the number of cases analyzed by a forensic anthropologist per year and set a baseline for expectations and performance. Based on these results, we suggest that forensic anthropology is underutilized in the medicolegal death investigation system and more forensic anthropologists should be employed within Medical Examiner/Coroner's Offices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1992, Norm Sauer called for a language shift in which practitioners would move away from the socially loaded term "race" and replace it with the less provocative term "ancestry." While many heeded the call and moved towards ancestry in their research and reports, the actual approach to research and analysis did not change. In response to this change, there was a large growth in ancestry estimation method development in the early decade of the 2000s. However, the practice of ancestry estimation did not adequately incorporate evolutionary theory in interpretation or trait selection and continued with little critical reflection. In the past decade, there has been an increase in ancestry validation methods with little critique of the "race" concept or discussion of modern human variation or reference samples. To advance, forensic anthropologists need to reckon with the practice of ancestry estimation as it is currently practiced. We are calling for another reform in the axiom focusing on evolutionary theory, population history, trait selection, and population‐level reference samples. The practice needs to abandon the terms ancestry and race completely and recalibrate to an analysis of population affinity. Population affinity is a statistical approach based on the underlying population structure that would allow the understanding of how microevolutionary forces act in concert with historical events (e.g., colonization, the Transatlantic Slave Trade, etc.) to shape modern human variation. This is not to be confused with geographic ancestry that all too often can be perceived as interchangeable with social race and as an affirmation of the biological concept of race. It is time to critically evaluate the social and scientific implications of the current practice of ancestry estimation, and re‐frame our approach to studying and analyzing modern human variation through a population structure approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Objectives: A fundamental assumption in biological anthropology is that living individuals will present with different growth than non‐survivors of the same population. The aim is to address the question of whether growth and development data of non‐survivors are reflective of the biological consequences of selective mortality and/or stress. Materials and Methods: The study compares dental development and skeletal growth collected from radiographic images of contemporary samples of living and deceased individuals from the United States (birth to 20 years) and South Africa (birth to 12 years). Further evaluation of deceased individuals is used to explore differential patterns among manners of death (MOD). Results: Results do not show any significant differences in skeletal growth or dental development between living and deceased individuals. However, in the South African deceased sample the youngest individuals exhibited substantially smaller diaphyseal lengths than the living sample, but by 2 years of age the differences were negligible. In the US sample, neither significant nor substantial differences were found in dental development or diaphyseal length according to MOD and age (>2 years of age), though some long bones in individuals <2 years of age did show significant differences. No significant differences were noted in diaphyseal length according to MOD and age in the SA sample. Discussion: The current findings refute the idea that contemporary deceased and living individuals would present with differential growth and development patterns through all of ontogeny as well as the assumptions linking short stature, poor environments, and MOD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study tests the relationship between third molar impaction and its concomitant effect on age estimation methods. Data were collected on radiographs of males analyzed in the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency Laboratory (n = 114). Radiographs of skeletonized individuals were scored for dental development, and age was assigned based on the appropriate ancestry‐based method. Differences between identified age and estimated dental age were assessed to determine whether molar impaction affected root development and age estimations. Results indicate that impacted teeth tend to be underdeveloped and result in age estimates that are too low. While these results are of note to anthropologists and odontologists performing dental age estimates, more work is needed to explore the effect of impaction on development among a more diverse sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives In the first issue of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, E.A. Hooton noted the expression of Eskimoid characteristics in the Icelandic skull, one of which was mandibular torus. Our goal is to evaluate this trait in another North Atlantic population, the Greenlandic Norse. Materials and methods An investigation of mandibular torus was carried out on all Greenlandic Norse skeletons disinterred up to 1986 ( n = 109), along with comparative samples from Iceland ( n = 82), Norway ( n = 98), and Denmark ( n = 64). Torus expression was scored on a six grade scale with absence and five degrees of trait presence. Results Greenlanders and Icelanders show extraordinarily high frequencies (65-97%) and pronounced expressions of mandibular torus. More surprising was the almost complete absence of this trait in a Danish Viking sample (9%) and a significantly lower frequency in medieval Norwegians (48%). Discussion The dramatic expression of mandibular torus in the Greenlandic Norse and their contrast to related Scandinavian populations in Europe stimulated the collection of data from the literature and the database of Christy G. Turner II for 49,970 individuals in 335 populations. When plotted on a global scale, mandibular torus shows a strong clinal distribution with the highest frequencies in northern latitudes and the lowest frequencies around the equator. Although mandibular torus has some hereditary component, as indicated by family studies, the trait has a strong environmental component of variance. How factors of a northern environment, including climatic stress and dietary behavior, influence torus expression remains enigmatic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluates population variation of eight cranial morphoscopic traits using samples of known southwest Hispanics ( n = 72), Guatemalans ( n = 106), American Blacks ( n = 146), and American Whites ( n = 218). We applied the support vector machine ( SVM) method to build a prediction model based on a subsample (20%) of the data; the remainder of the data was used as a test sample. The SVM approach effectively differentiated between the four groups with correct classification rates between 72% (Guatemalan group) and 94% (American Black group). However, when the Guatemalan and southwest Hispanic samples were pooled, the same model correctly classified all groups with a higher degree of accuracy (American Black = 96%; American White = 77%; and the pooled Hispanic sample = 91%). This study also identified significant differences between the two Hispanic groups in six of the eight traits using univariate statistical tests. These results speak to the unique population histories of these samples and the current use of the term 'Hispanic' within forensic anthropology. Finally, we argue that the SVM can be used as a classification model for ancestry estimation in a forensic context and as a diagnostic tool may broaden the application of morphoscopic trait data for the assessment of ancestry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are not juxtaposing bias and objectivity here intentionally; instead, we are hoping to illustrate how there are differences between I objectivity i and I neutrality i and that recognizing these differences can allow forensic science practitioners to engage with their communities in productive ways that are separate from their scientific analyses and professional responsibilities. Recently, there has been some debate in the forensic science community around issues of importance to all forensic science professionals, that of objectivity and neutrality in our work. [Extracted from the article]

As the hardest tissue in the body, teeth have the potential to offer a wealth of biological information to the forensic anthropologist, which can include the assessment of ancestry. Using a large data set of dental measurements, the efficacy of mesiodistal and buccolingual tooth dimensions to discriminate between broad, geographically based groups is explored. A general pattern is identified: African populations have the largest teeth, Asians possess teeth of intermediate size, and Europeans have the smallest teeth. In a discriminant function analysis using crown measurements of all teeth (mandibular and maxillary and excluding the third molar), individuals were correctly classified in 71.3% of cases. When the sex of the individual is known, classification is improved up to 88.1% in females and 71.9% of males (cross-validated). Based on these results, we argue that dental metrics can be regularly employed as part of the development of the biological profile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigates the utility of cervical measurements in deciduous teeth and how they correlate with traditional measurements of the crown. First, this study establishes definitions by which these measurements could reliably be taken. Next, deciduous cervical and traditional crown diameters were taken on three distinct skeletal samples: a Neolithic assemblage from Central Anatolia (Çatalhöyük, n = 85), a precontact sample from Northern California (CA-ALA-329, n = 34), and a group of intrusive burials interred at Çatalhöyük that date between AD 60 and 1650 ( n = 38). Across the dentition there are positive correlations between crown and cervical measurements, which tend to be higher in anterior teeth than in posterior teeth. Both measurements show low correlations with age; however, cervical measurements show fewer negative correlations with age. An intraobserver error study found low levels of error for both types of measurements. On a subset of the Çatalhöyük sample ( n = 9), a principal components and biological distance analysis were conducted comparing the two types of measurements. Also, all three samples were subject to a canonical discriminant function analysis and the results from cervical and crown measurements were compared. All analyses produced slightly different results for each type of data suggesting that crown and cervical measurements capture different aspects of tooth shape. While cervical and crown measurements provide different statistical results, cervical measurements can provide information relevant to anthropological studies and may allow for larger datasets to be used by allowing the inclusion of teeth with modified crowns. Am J Phys Anthropol 149:299-306, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a study of social groupings as it applied to the inhabitants of Çatalhöyük, a neolithic site in Turkey. It cites a belief by anthropologists that the inhabitants grouped themselves according to biological kinship, burying their relatives within their own houses. Recent findings as of 2011 have found, however, that a number of the dead grouped in the same houses were not biologically related. This reportedly suggests that either they did not group themselves according to kinship, or had different definitions of it.

A letter to the editor is presented in response to the article related to ethics and scholarship in forensic science in a March 2014 issue.

The article reviews the book "Anthropological Perspectives on Tooth Morphology: Genetics, Evolution, Variation" edited by G. Richard Scott and Joel D. Irish.