ObjectivesComplete and accurate human skeletal inventory is seldom possible in archaeological and forensic cases involving severe fragmentation. In such cases, skeletal mass comparisons with published references may be used as an alternative to assess skeletal completeness but they are too general for a case-by-case routine analysis. The objective is to solve this issue by creating linear regression equations to estimate the total mass of a skeleton based on the mass of individual bones. Material and MethodsTotal adult skeletal mass and individual mass of the clavicle, humerus, femur, patella, carpal, metacarpal, tarsal and metatarsal bones were recorded in a sample of 60 skeletons from the 21 st century identified skeletal collection (University of Coimbra). The sample included 32 females and 28 males with ages ranging from 31 to 96 years old (mean = 76.4; sd = 14.8). Skeletal mass linear regression equations were calculated based on this sample. ResultsThe mass of individual bones was successfully used to predict the approximate total mass of the adult skeleton. The femur, humerus, and second metacarpal were the best predictors of total skeletal mass with root mean squared errors ranging from 292.9 to 346.1 gm. DiscussionLinear regression was relatively successful at estimating adult skeletal mass. The non-normal distribution of the sample in terms of mass may have reduced the predictive power of the equations. These results have clear impact for bioanthropology, especially forensic anthropology, since this method may provide better estimates of the completeness of the skeleton or the minimum number of individuals.Keywords: bioarchaeology; forensic anthropology; bone mass; scattered remains; funerary practice.The objective of this paper is to investigate the potential of linear regression to estimate the mass of human adult skeletons based on the mass of individual bones. In some cases involving skeletal remains, it may be difficult to assess how complete the skeleton is due to fragmentation that prevents the anatomical identification of all skeletal elements. For example, it may be difficult to estimate the minimum number of individuals (MNI) or decide when to conclude forensic searches for the remains of victims when it is impossible to determine the amount of missing bones, especially if the remains are very fragmented, commingled and/or scattered. Such inventory problems are often more complicated still in cases involving burned skeletal remains. In the case of archaeological cremations, an exhaustive inventory is often impossible to accomplish due to the high number of anatomically unidentified fragments (Gonçalves et al, 2015). Therefore, unorthodox methods to assess skeletal completeness are worth exploration.To our knowledge, the only alternative method to assess skeleton completeness is by weighing remains to provide an estimate of skeletal mass. This is then compared with references obtained from samples of complete adult skeletons (e.g. Ingalls, 1931;Lowrance and Latimer, 1957;Silva et al.,...

Age at death estimation in burnt human remains is problematic due to the severe heat-induced modifications that may affect the skeleton after a burning event. The objective of this paper was to assess if cementochronology, which focuses on the cementum incremental lines, is a reliable method of age estimation in burnt remains. Besides the classical approach based on the counting of incremental lines, another approach based on the extrapolation of incremental lines taking into account the cement layer thickness and the incremental line thickness was investigated. A comparison of the performance of the two techniques was carried out on a sample of 60 identified monoradicular teeth that were recently extracted at dentist offices and then experimentally burnt at two maximum temperatures (400 and 900 °C

Sex diagnosis is a crucial element in the analysis of skeletal remains from forensic and archaeological contexts. Thus, researchers have developed several methods using different anatomical regions to estimate sex. Despite such variety of methods, sexing of collective cremated human skeletal remains is still challenging due to heatinduced size changes and fragmentation, along with the typical commingling of collective contexts. This study aims to examine the potential of burned tooth crowns for odontometric sex estimation. To that end, heat-induced size changes were quantified in experimentally burned teeth. Then, odontometric sex estimation was performed in a set of theoretical samples of pre and post-burned tooth crowns. Results show burned tooth crowns undergo variable but consistent and statistically significant expansion, which is due to micro-fracturing. Such heat induced size changes are of sufficient magnitude to impact odontometric sex diagnosis and sex ratios of the theoretical samples. Yet, sexing using burned tooth crowns may still be useful to estimate the minimum number of females in a given sample. Further, the effect of heat-induced size changes may be calculated and removed using scanning.