Age estimation of living individuals is topical, and is particularly important globally, owing to increasing migration of undocumented individuals. Radiographic skeletal analysis of hand-wrist skeletal development is often used to infer chronological age based on direct comparison to standards such as the Greulich and Pyle atlas. However, this atlas has been criticised for being applied to foreign populations without due consideration of accuracy. The aims of the current study are to assess the precision and accuracy of the atlas in a contemporary Western Australian population and to develop population specific standards based on the latter system. The study sample comprised 360 individuals (equal sexes) and aged from birth to 25 years; a hold-out group comprising a further 50 individuals was used for model validation. Age estimation was performed through the visual comparison of the study radiographs against the atlas standards; statistical analyses were performed to assess the relationship between estimated skeletal and actual age. Prediction models were formulated; mean SEE values were ±0.005–0.90 (male) and ±0.25–0.421 years (female). Comparisons with prior research demonstrates the importance of contemporary population standards. The models presented here have forensic utility in a Western Australia jurisdiction, albeit the level of accuracy achieved is not suitable for the specific determination of legal majority.
With the increasing use of radiological three-dimensional imaging, different metric and morphological aspects of the frontal sinuses (FS) have been examined relative to their potential to aid human identification, including sex estimation. The aim of this study is to assess the validity of the metric analysis of the FS volume for estimating sex in a Western Australian (WA) adult population, following the Michel et al. (2015) method. The right, left and total frontal sinus volume (TFSV) from 99 computed tomography scans (47 males and 52 females) of WA individuals aged 18-40 years were three-dimensionally reconstructed using OsiriX
The voyage and subsequent mutiny associated with the wrecking of the VOC retourschip "Batavia" (1629) in the Houtman Abrolhos, off the western coast of Australia, represents one of the earliest documented European encounters with Australia. Much of our understanding of events surrounding the mutiny is detailed in a rich historical record, supplemented in the modern period with targeted archaeological research. Most recently, a large-scale multidisciplinary project, 'Shipwrecks of the Roaring Forties' (2014–2019), resulted in the archaeological excavation and analysis of a further 11 individuals on Beacon Island, long dubbed 'Batavia's Graveyard', where the survivors of the wrecking spent several months trying to survive. The latter work brings the total number of individuals recovered from Beacon Island to 21. The present paper considers research undertaken on Beacon Island between 2015 and 2018, specific to the archaeological excavation and analysis of four individuals, designated BIB-11 to BIB-14. These burials represent the first discovery of human remains on the Island through archaeological investigations and for which their burial context and physical integrity had not been compromised by prior human actions, intentional or otherwise. The archaeological and biological anthropological interpretation of these individuals and their burial context, relative to the other sites excavated on the Island, facilitates new and significant insight into these people and the events surrounding their untimely demise on Beacon Island in the early seventeenth century.
In forensic investigations of unknown skeletal remains, a biological profile is used to narrow the pool of potential matches in the missing person’s database; one of the important components of that profile is the accurate estimation of skeletal sex. The current study involves the morphometric quantification of cranial sexual dimorphism in a Canadian population for the specific purpose of developing predictive models for the estimation of sex. The main aim of this study is, therefore, to quantify the accuracy methods of said existing sex estimation models as applied to a Canadian population and thereafter devise population-specific standards. The current study represents the retrospective analysis of 400 (190 female, 210 male) multiple detector computed tomography (MDCT) scans collected from the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, Ontario. Preliminary results indicate that current methods of cranial skeletal sex estimation illicit unacceptable classification accuracy rates when applied to this sample.
Abstract The loss of the Dutch East India Company ship Batavia in 1629 on the Houtman Abrolhos off the west coast of Australia and subsequent mutiny is one of the most dramatic events in the history of European encounters with Australia, and was widely popularized in 17th-century publications. The archaeological remains surpass that of a shipwreck with its consequent jetsam and flotsam, and are the silent witnesses to a cultural landscape of survival created within a few months by a horrible sequence of events. Here we present archaeological evidence collected from 2014 to 2019 in a new research project that informs on these historical events. We discovered 12 victims in single and multiple graves, as well as evidence for survivors’ resistance to a band of mutineers and remains of the possible gallows site where 7 mutineers were executed. Together these sites contribute to the understanding of the survival landscape at one of the earliest European sites in Australia.
Since the 1970s, monumental stone structures now called mustatil have been documented across Saudi Arabia. However, it was not until 2017 that the first intensive and systematic study of this structure type was undertaken, although this study could not determine the precise function of these features. Recent excavations in AlUla have now determined that these structures fulfilled a ritual purpose, with specifically selected elements of both wild and domestic taxa deposited around a betyl. This paper outlines the results of the University of Western Australia’s work at site IDIHA-0008222, a 140 m long mustatil (IDIHA-F-0011081), located 55 km east of AlUla. Work at this site sheds new and important light on the cult, herding and ‘pilgrimage’ in the Late Neolithic of north-west Arabia, with the site revealing one of the earliest chronometrically dated betyls in the Arabian Peninsula and some of the earliest evidence for domestic cattle in northern Arabia.
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