Skeletal age at death: accuracy of determination and implications for human demography.

Abstract

A method of estimating adult age at death in the skeleton using seriation and multifactorial age determination was tested using subsamples of the Hamann-Todd Collection. Over 3000 cadaver records were surveyed from which over 250 were chosen to construct two distinct populations of specified survivorship. Each of the two samples was then aged and sexed by observers without any prior knowledge of age, sex, or racial composition. More traditional scoring systems and forensic methods were also tested. The seriation-multifactorial method was found to be superior and to provide highly accurate estimates of age at death. Also, ages of the second sample were estimated with knowledge of the assessors’ performance with the first sample, so that attempts to eliminate bias in standard age indicators could be tested.

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