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In forensic science determination of the origin and sex of skeletal remains is an important task for identification purposes. In this study we investigated the krotaphion-sphenion distance (K‑S distance) in the pterion region of German, Euro-American, African-American and Rwandan skulls of modern individuals from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century to look for statistically significant differences in sex and ancestry. We found a statistically significant sex-specific difference in the K‑S distance, which was greater in male skulls than in female skulls for both sides of the skull. Our study also showed that there is a statistically significant difference in the K‑S distance between the four populations studied. Landmarks and morphometric parameters measured in our investigations, which were not used for the present examination were provided to the software program Fordisc for its reference data to enhance the range of its usability for identification of unknown skulls or partial skulls of European individuals., Bei der forensischen Begutachtung zur Identifizierung unbekannter Skelettfunde spielen Herkunftsanlaysen und Geschlechtsbestimmungen eine bedeutende Rolle. In unserer Studie an euroamerikanischen, afroamerikanischen, ruandischen und deutschen Schädeln untersuchte unsere Arbeitsgruppe die sog. Krotaphion-Sphenion-Distanz in der Pterion Region am menschlichen Schädel, um geschlechts- und herkunftsspezifische Unterschiede näher zu beleuchten. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen einen signifikanten Unterschied in der K‑S-Distanz: Männliche Individuen zeigten auf beiden Seiten des Schädels signifikant größere Werte als weibliche Individuen, des Weiteren waren signifikante Unterschiede unter den vier untersuchten Populationen festzustellen. Die weiteren, im Rahmen der Studie gemessenen, jedoch für die vorliegende Auswertung nicht verwendeten Landmarken und morphometrischen Parameter der Schädel gingen in die Datenbank für die Identifizierungs-Software Fordisc ein, um deren Datengrundlage und damit Nutzbarkeit zur Identifikation unbekannter Schädel oder Schädelteile europäischer Individuen zu verbessern.

This work is a reply to the comment by Edinborough et al. (2021) on our recently published paper (Penezic et al., 2020). In our original paper we presented the results based on the tooth cementum annulation analysis that show that the Neolithic females had higher levels of physiological stress than the Mesolithic females in the Central Balkans. We proposed the hypothesis that this was caused by differences in fertility. In their comment on our paper, Edinborough et al. (2021) question: 1) the accuracy and precision of the TCA analysis as the age estimation method 2) that pregnancies leave traces in the tooth cementum 3) our interpretation of the results. In this reply we argue: 1) that the TCA is a reliable method for age estimation 2) that the reflection of pregnancies in the tooth cementum was established by independent and previously published research and 3) we clarify that our interpretation - that the increased fertility in the Neolithic period may be the cause of the observed patterns - is a hypothesis that needs to be further tested rather than the final conclusion of our original paper.

In this casuistry, two accidents from Germany and Switzerland are presented that happened during the shot of recoilless anti-tank weapons. In both cases, the injuries led to the death of two soldiers: A 22-year-old soldier in Germany was struck by the counter mass of a so-called Davis gun which had been fired by a comrade during a firing exercise; he died from his severe injuries, especially in the abdominal part of the body. As a peculiarity of the wound morphology, it was found to be a thick-layered, metallic, gray material in the wound cavity, which corresponded to the material of the counter mass that was ejected opposite to the shooting direction. The other case took place in Switzerland, where a 24-year-old soldier was seriously injured during an exercise with portable anti-tank rockets. At the time the shot was fired, he stood behind the launcher and was hit by the propulsion jet of the rocket motor. He died as well from his severe injuries, which were located at the chest done by the gas jet and by the very high pressure. In both cases, two different causes of death were present: massive blunt violence in the first case versus a jet of hot gases of very high speed and temperature in the second case.

The Neolithic way of life was accompanied by an increase in various forms of physiological stress (e.g. disease, malnutrition). Here we use the method of tooth cementum annulation (TCA) analysis in order to detect physiological stress that is probably related to calcium metabolism. The TCA method is applied to a sample of teeth from three Mesolithic and five Neolithic individuals from the Central Balkans. The average number of physiological stress episodes is higher in the Neolithic group – but the statistical significance of this result cannot be evaluated due to the small sample size, therefore these results should be taken as preliminary.

To find out the time since death (PMI) of a human individual, from which only skeletal remains are left is a difficult question to answer, since methods currently available don’t bring concrete answers. Subsequent to our validation study on porcine bones, we focused on human bones analysing if collagen degradation would occur at a predictive rate so that the method may be used for PMI-estimation. We tried to reproduce a method for determining the Co/NCo (Collagen to Non-Collagen) ratio of porcine bones Boaks et al. demonstrated in 2014. Our study sample consisted of 37 human bones from a forensic PMI context and 11 archaeological samples; we prepared thin bone sections of 250 µm; after staining the sections we used spectrophotometry for a portion of the samples and stereomicroscopy and digital imaging to analyze the Co/NCo ratio. Detecting the Co/NCo ratio with spectrophotometry produced results much lower than those published by Boaks et al. (2014) on porcine bone samples and much lower than physiologically expected; a similar result we also got in our validation study on porcine bone samples. We, therefore, applied our new method of stereomicroscopy and digital imaging, which we previously tested on porcine bones. The samples of male individuals showed a significant reduction of the Co/NCo ratio correlating to the PMI. Nevertheless, we still consider analyzing the Co/NCo ration of human bone samples not sufficient for forensic issues. Therefore, greater reference data as well as more experience in practice are needed.

The Neolithic way of life was accompanied by an increase in various forms of physiological stress (e.g. disease, malnutrition). Here we use the method of tooth cementum annulation (TCA) analysis in order to detect physiological stress that is probably related to calcium metabolism. The TCA method is applied to a sample of teeth from three Mesolithic and five Neolithic individuals from the Central Balkans. The average number of physiological stress episodes is higher in the Neolithic group – but the statistical significance of this result cannot be evaluated due to the small sample size, therefore these results should be taken as preliminary.

We used the tooth cementum annulation method (TCA) to investigate physiological stress before and during the Neolithic demographic transition in Europe. Episodes of physiological stress are reflected as “stress layers” in the tooth cementum at an almost annual resolution. We used the TCA method to detect and count the number of the stress events for a sample of 21 Mesolithic and 25 Neolithic individuals from the Central Balkans from the period between 9500 and 5400 years BC. In accord with the theory of the Neolithic demographic transition, we hypothesize that the Neolithic individuals will have more stress than the Mesolithic individuals. Our results suggest that the Neolithic females had significantly more stress layers in the tooth cementum per year of life than the Mesolithic females. The difference between Mesolithic and Neolithic males was not statistically significant. We conclude that Neolithic women had more physiological stress episodes than Mesolithic women. The differential pattern between sexes, combined with the fact that pregnancies are one of the major causes of stress layer formation in tooth cementum, might indicate that the observed differences are mostly due to increased fertility in the Neolithic.