Regarding sex estimation on human skeletal remains, the current trend in forensic anthropology is towards creating national standards, as population-specificity of discriminant functions is now a known fact. Also, over the last period of time, discriminant function analysis of osteometric data has become the method of choice in forensic anthropology, as it renders high accuracy results, superior to those obtained by visual shape assessment or direct metric comparison. We have conducted a study on 200 adult crania (100 males, 100 females) from a modern Romanian population sample (Rainer collection, Bucharest). Based on 11 cranial measurements, we have calculated population-specific discriminant functions for intact crania, cranial vault and facial region measurements, as well as single-variable DF. The results point to a pronounced craniometric sexual dimorphism in Romanian population, similar to other European populations: sexing accuracies of 88% on intact crania, 81% on cranial vault measurements and 83.5% on facial measurements respectively, with 83.5% correctly assigned by facial breadth alone discriminant function. Discussions on the results, as well as comparisons with similar studies are presented below.

In a forensic anthropology context, the mandible represents a reliable skeletal element with increased resistance to environmental factors. Sexual dimorphism assessment is most accurately obtained on population-specific computed discriminant functions. A previous study on 100 Romanian population mandibles has provided a discriminant function with an accuracy of 86% based on 7 measurements. The main purpose of the present study is to evaluate whether or not an increase in the sample number (200 mandibles) can produce a different discriminant function that will allow similar accuracy rates, but with fewer measurements. We have used 3 measurements (chin height, bigonial width and bicondylar breadth) that provided a discriminant function with an overall accuracy of determination of 84%, equal for male and female groups. The most dimorphic singular measurement was bigonial width, which provided a discriminant function with 80.5% accuracy when used alone. We concluded that a larger study sample allows similar accuracies of sex determination with fewer measurements, which in turn can improve the assessment of sexual dimorphism by using a time-efficient method.

Road accidents are often caused by an accumulation of elements which belong largely to four major classes of conditions: the human factor, infrastructure, vehicles and weather conditions. In Romania the number of fatal road accidents per capita is among the highest in Europe. In order to limit the number of directly fatal road accidents, it is essential to know the contributing factors that lead to their increase. The purpose of this study is to synthetically analyze the conditions related to human and environmental factors that contribute to directly fatal road accidents on a representative sample of cases. Our study has identified as major risk factors for fatal road accidents: male gender, age between 30 and 39 years old, low educational level, darkness, inattention, excessive speed while driving. Therefore the main risk factors for fatal road accidents are similar to those in other countries. The large number of cases (positioning us on the first three places in the EU, together with Lithuania and Croatia) may be decreased by implementing protective measures similar to those in other EU countries, which have been shown to significantly decrease the number of fatal road accidents.

In Romania the cases of anthropological forensic exams performed in order to estimate the age of subadults include mostly people with an extremely low socioeconomic status, frequently homeless people, whose parents did not have a certified copy of the medical birth certificate issued. Given that the population for which these exams are done is relatively homogeneous in terms of socio-economic and ethnic factors, the purpose of this paper is to identify the utility of the isolated anthropometric exam in order to establish age. The study was conducted on a total of 181 forensic cases which required an anthropological forensic exam so as to estimate the age in subadult individuals (under 13 years old). The cases were selected from among those where one knew the exact age with a reasonable degree of certainty. The variables included in the study were: sex, weight, head circumference, teeth, maximum arm span, arm length, forearm length, left hand length, chest circumference, thigh length, calf length. For each parameter, a linear regression equation for males and respectively females was created. The adjusted R 2 values for the equations created based on the above parameters were in all cases over 0.5; the highest values were obtained, in the case of both sexes, for the waist and the maximum arm span. Conclusions: Based on the regression equations obtained for age estimation based on general anthropometric parameters one can create, either in Excel or in programming languages, algorithms that may, in many cases, allow the age identification with a few weeks as a margin of error. The best results in terms of age estimation were obtained using a combined method. However, even using a small number of markers one can reach a reasonable age estimation (+/-6 months), which is sufficient to correlate the anthropological data with those of the medical birth certificate.

The aim of the current paper is to present two inhumation graves belonging to Petreşti culture recently discovered within the Petreşti-Groapa Galbenă settlement (Alba County, Transylvania). The burial of a deceased in a cist made of adobe pieces represents an unusual funerary practice for the Eneolithic Petreşti culture communities. This discovery is especially important because the current state of research related to the mortuary practices of Petreşti culture bearers is not satisfactory.