In this paper, we evaluate the causes of differential skeletal preservation in the Windover Pond skeletal series (8BR246). We collected data on sex and age for approximately 110 individuals, and calculated a preservation score for each individual based on the presence of 80 skeletal landmarks. Our research questions evaluated the relationship between bone preservation and individual age and sex, and between the presence of preserved brain material and skeletal preservation, and the effects of burial location on bone preservation. The results indicate variability in average preservation for the sample (micro = 0.53, SD = 0.22) with an apparent lack of sex-specific (P = 0.79) or age-specific (P = 0.37) differences in preservation. The relationship between brain and skeletal preservation (P = 0.15) was not significant. The horizontal distribution of burials was not significantly correlated with skeletal preservation (north: r = -0.10, P = 0.93; east: r = 0.09, P = 0.45); however, vertical depth was a significant predictor of preservation (r = -0.31, P = 0.005), indicating that skeletal preservation decreased as burials were located closer to the ground surface. The observed variability in preservation scores may be related to the partial drying and resubmergence of the uppermost burials for the last few millennia. Comparison of Windover element-specific survival rates with previous analyses based on terrestrial samples (Galloway et al. [1997] Forensic taphonomy, Boca Raton: CRC Press; Waldron [1987] Death, decay and reconstruction, Manchester: Manchester University Press; Willey et al. [1997] Am J Phys Anthropol 104:513-528) affirms the relationship between element weight or density and bone survival. The unique taphonomic context of our study sample effected little change in bone deterioration processes.

The present study examines the sexing potential of the minimum supero-inferior femoral neck diameter in Caucasians and African-Americans who lived at the turn of the century. A Student's t-test and an ANOVA indicate that population differences in neck morphology exist, albeit the strength of the test is fairly weak (P = 0.015). Predictive models were developed using a linear discriminant function analysis for the African-American sample, the Caucasian sample, and the combined African-American and Caucasian (AAC) sample. Jackknifed classification matrices produced classification success rates ranging from 87 to 92%. Each of the three discriminant functions were evaluated using an independent, random holdout sample. Although a smaller holdout sample usually better approximates the true error involved in an application, this was clearly not the case in this study. For African-Americans, 28 of 28 individuals were correctly classified, for Caucasians 24 of 25, and for the combined AAC sample 53 of 53 individuals were sexed correctly. It is more likely that the true accuracy of the model for the population approximates 90%. This accuracy combined with the high rate of preservation of the femoral neck makes this measurement useful in extremely fragmentary samples.

The results of an independent test of the minimum supero-inferior femoral neck diameter as a sex predictor are presented. Seidemann et al. (1) generated discriminant functions for Caucasians, African-Americans, and a combined race sample from the Hamann-Todd skeletal collection. Jackknifed classification matrices and the use of independent, random validation samples indicated a sex prediction accuracy in the 90% range. This, combined with a high rate of preservation, makes the femoral neck a significant measure for forensic applications. However, the method has not been evaluated on a truly modern sample. Data were collected for 94 males and 49 females from the Documented Collection at the University of New Mexico. The sample consists of 94 Caucasians, 33 African Ameicans, three modern Native Americans, two Hispanics, and 11 individuals of unknown ancestry. All individuals were born after the turn of the century. We evaluate the accuracy of the discriminant functions generated from the Hamann-Todd control sample. For Caucasians, 83% were correctly classified, for African Americans 97% were correctly classified and for the combined race function 85% were correctly classified. This decrease in accuracy is the result of the increase in African American male and all female sample means. This effectively decreases the separation between males and females for the femoral neck diameter. We generate new discriminant functions from the modern data and jackknife the classification matrices. The Caucasian function was 84% accurate, the African-American function was 82% accurate and the combined sample function was 85% accurate. The femoral neck may provide a useful alternative to multivariate techniques for individuals who are poorly preserved.

This year marks the beginning of the third decade since the enactment of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Since 1990, many of the states have enacted laws in response to NAGPRA. This article reviews the state‐level responses to human burial sites protection post‐NAGPRA, with a particular focus on Louisiana. This review shows how some states have managed to craft human remains protection laws that are more expansive than NAGPRA in many ways, including both human remains protections and archaeological site protections. These latter protections, as this review demonstrates, must often be cobbled together from a hodgepodge of common and civil law traditions, traditional cemetery protections, and the state‐level NAGPRA analogues. The end result, in some jurisdictions, is comprehensive archaeological site protection that did not exist in the pre‐NAGPRA world.