Biological Variation Of Forensic Anthropology

Forensic anthropology is a form of anthropology that can be described as the study of humans. These types of anthropologists focus mainly on identifying and constructing a biological profile based off of old/ancient remains. They do this by estimating age, sex, body type, and ancestry as well as identifying certain characteristics like diseases and injuries that could help in identifying the cause of death. To determine these things they start off by asking themselves a number of questions such as whether or not the fossil is bone, whether or not the remains are from a human, what the bones represent, how old the remains are etc. forensic scientists can accurately and precisely determine racial features by analyzing skeletal remains because
The question of biological race that helps to describe human biological variation has had a long debate in physical anthropology. Liberman et al. (2003) argued that there is much debate over the degree to which supports the idea of race concept within the field of physical anthropology has changed over time (Liberman et al. p 16). The term “race” is not only common but it has been used to refer to the aspects of both biological and cultural variation. However it is not always the best way to describe or analyze the human biological variation. In order to determine ones biological race anthropologists have measures skin colour using several models of reflectance spectrophotometers which are devices that measures the amount of light at a given wavelength that is reflected back off a person’s skin and the lighter person the greater amount reflected light they will have. Most studies rely on the filter number 609 of the E.E.L reflectometer to determine different skin colours (Relethford, p 17). Population geneticists tend to use the degree of variation among populations using a measure known as Wright’s FST. FST can be estimated from phenotypic traits given heritability estimates (Relethford et al. p, 17). Regardless of whether one considers the FST values from genetic markers useful or not, when it
However as with every good idea there are always a couple of flaws and even though these methods are used highly by forensic anthropologists there are other methods that they use as backup just in case. With that being said forensic scientist can accurately and precisely determine racial features by analyzing skeletal remains because they use different types of digital processing such as skeletal morphology and the craniometrics system, they look at phenotypic traits such as an individual skin colour, and they look at DNA of individuals as well as their head shapes and compare them to other ancestral remains either ancient or modern and compare them to other skulls that were found in that same region or continent to help them determine the ancestral background of the skeletal remains that’s they