Craniometrics used in "The Contribution of South Asia to the Peopling of Australasia"
Our project utilises craniometrics for a number of reasons. First, several large comparative databases are available for populations distributed along the central and eastern rim of the Indian Ocean. Perhaps the most important involves the measurements made by the late W.W. Howells. His measurements can be accessed through the web at W.W. Howells' Craniometric Data and make up an essential element of the forensic anthropology computer programs CRANID, developed by Richard Wright, and FORDISC, developed by Stephen Ousley and Richard Jantz. Other major craniometric databases have been compiled by Michael Pietrusewsky (e.g., 1984) and by Peter Brown, who has published his original data on the web (see Peter Brown's Australian and Asian Palaeoanthropology - Research Resources). Secondly, statistical procedures for analysing size and shape variation based on craniometrics have been investigated for well over a century, and many sophisticated techniques are now readily available. One needs only recall that Karl Pearson's original multivariate statistic, his so-called "Coefficient of Racial Likeness" or CRL, was originally formulated and tested in the main on craniometrics. Thirdly, there is an enormous literature written on the use of craniometrics in distinguishing between populations and in documenting human evolutionary trends during the Neogene and indeed throughout the Pleistocene.
Our project focuses on recording the measurements described by Howells (1973), excluding his radii, and the measurements listed by Pietrusewsky (1984). Pietrusewsky's list is critical because no other physical anthropologist has covered East Asian and Pacific populations to nearly the same degree of thoroughness. These two measurement sets addittionally cover all the measurements utilised by Tsunehiko Hanihara, who has also measured numerous crania from the Asia-Pacific region (and other parts of the world), and has graciously sent this writer his original data for use in our project. Another significant benefit from using Pietrusewsky's measurement list is that the FORDISC 2.0 manual (Ousley and Jantz 1996) defines the cranial measurements to be taken in terms more consistent with Pietrusewsky's than with Howells's definitions, even for those comparisons to be made with the Howells populations (see FORDISC interobserver comparability). Note that our project does not employ three-dimensional coordinate plotting and associated statistical tests, as this would not avail the large comparative databases cited above, and because most of the human remains encountered in the archaeological record are fragmentary to varying degrees.
One major contribution of our project will be the documentation of craniometric variation in South Asia. Most of this is due to the hard work by Pathmanathan Raghavan in accessing and measuring collections of human skulls across India. Until Raghavan performed this research, modern craniometric studies (modern in the sense of using a large battery of measurements, and multivariate statistical procedures) on South Asians were essentially restricted to collections of South Asian skulls in museums in Europe and the UK. Indeed, the Howells (1989) database misses out South Asia altogether (see map at the bottom of this page). This gap has been filled to a large extent by Richard Wright, whose latest edition (CRANID 5) includes the Beduins and Lachish from West Asia and northwest Indians from the sub-continent, and whose next edition (CRANID 6) will also include the Punjab crania measured by Raghavan. Nonetheless, Raghavan's craniometric database as a whole should prove to be an invaluable resource, especially with respect to issues such as analysis of Mesolithic Indian crania and the debated presence of "Australoid" tribal populations in southern India.
Links to additional web pages will be posted below as these web pages are created.
Links to Craniometric Web Pages
FORDISC interobserver comparability
Australian Aboriginal craniometrics and FORDISC
References
Howells, W.W. 1973. Cranial Variation in Man. Cambridge, Mass.: Peabody Museum.
Howells, W.W. 1989. Skull Shapes and the Map. Cambridge, Mass.: Peabody Museum.
Ousley, S.D. and R.L. Jantz. 1996. FORDISC 2.0: Personal Computer Forensic Discriminant Functions. Knoxville: University of Tennessee.
Pietrusewsky, M. 1984. Metric and Non-Metric Cranial Variation in Australian Aboriginal Populations Compared with Populations from the Pacific and Asia. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.