Ancestry estimation in forensic anthropology: A review

Abstract

Forensic anthropologists assist law enforcement agencies and medical examiner's offices with investigations involving human remains, providing insight into trauma analysis, the establishment of postmortem interval, and the estimation of biological profile data. Ancestry is considered one of the more difficult aspects of the biological profile, due in large part to the complicated relationship between skeletal morphology and social constructs. The methods used to estimate ancestry rely on the correlation between skeletal morphology, geographic origin, and an individual's social race. While there is a well‐documented contemptible history associated with the development of ancestry estimation methods in biological anthropology, many of the more traditional, now antiquated, methods are still used in some laboratories. The push to improve the framework within which ancestry data are analyzed requires validation and reassessment for each method in addition to the development of novel approaches utilizing modern technological advances. An array of software programs designed to aid in ancestry estimation is available. These advances do not signal the end of ancestry‐related research. Indeed, several areas seemingly stagnated by tradition and time require further study through more than simply review and rarefaction. The future of ancestry estimation research centers on: (a) abandoning the trait list approach, (b) rejecting the three‐group model, (c) establishing larger and more representative reference data, (d) assessing the utility of mixed method models, and (e) developing new statistical approaches and updating current software tools. This article is categorized under: Forensic Anthropology > Ancestry Determination Forensic Medicine > Historical Perspectives Forensic Anthropology > Anthropology in Mass Disaster & War Crime Contexts

Evaluating population affinity estimates in forensic anthropology: Insights from the forensic anthropology database for assessing methods accuracy (FADAMA)

“…In forensic anthropology, this definition of ancestry is invoked when practitioners use their experience [51] to translate the classifications obtained from their estimation methods of choice, which can vary by data type (metric or discrete), assessment framework (statistical or gross assessment), and software (FORDISC, 3D-ID, AncesTrees), into a macro-level and single-group category [52][53][54][55]. This approach operates under the assumption that for current-day peoples there still exists a clear and stable association between this idea of ancestry and some set of micro-regional level, geopolitical labels (such as Guatemalan or Vietnamese) and even the largely social, self or ascribed, and often racial, identifiers (such as Black or Hispanic) [14,56]. Some forensic anthropology scholars have therefore argued that the practice of ancestry estimation descends directly from a racialized, typological approach to human variation in which the decedents are assigned to categorical races.…”

Towards a Method for Discerning Sources of Supply within the Human Remains Trade via Patterns of Visual Dissimilarity and Computer Vision

“…Traditional forensic anthropological approaches to estimating ancestry, especially of remains recovered from crime scenes, clandestine graves, or sites of mass disaster, as well as unprovenanced remains recovered from the market, seek to quantify and qualify the complex interrelationship between skeletal morphology, genetics, geographic origin, and socio-cultural constructs (Pilloud & Hefner 2016;Dunn et al 2020). While various researchers have and continue to attempt to develop regression equations to estimate ancestry from various infracranial elements (e.g.…”

“…For each image we study, we end up with a series of distance measures, alongside metadata describing whether or not the image has a secure provenance, and its ancestry estimation using the 3-group model (but see Dunn et al 2020 for criticism of that model). We also have included in our dataset images of Indigenous skulls published in the 1940s from the United States that enable us to include a fourth category, 'Indigenous North America'.…”

“…We use the term ' ancestry' or ' origin' in their forensic anthropological senses; we are not thereby implying that these categories are how these individuals experienced 'race'. Dunn et al 2020 provide an overview of the paradox of ' estimating a culturally constructed, peer-perceived category (social race) from biological tissues. These estimations are only possible because of the nonzero correlation between social race, skeletal morphology, and geographic origin which has been maintained (at least in the United States) through assortative mating and institutional racism' (Dunn et al 2020: 2).…”

The need to incorporate human variation and evolutionary theory in forensic anthropology: A call for reform

“…In this review, we argue that Smay and Armelagos (2000) appear to be correct, in that there has only been a shift in terminology and not in research practice. To outline this argument and critique, we restrict our discourse to the post-1990's debate of the race concept, with a focus on forensic anthropology, as the early historical origin of the stance has been thoroughly covered in numerous publications to date (e.g., Cunha & Ubelaker, 2020;Dunn et al, 2020;Ousley et al, 2018). We begin this appraisal with the conflict between the more traditional or theoretical aspects of biological anthropology and the applied subdiscipline of forensic anthropology from 1990 to 2000.…”