Research Training Program

Andrea Berger
Wesleyan University
Middletown, CT

Steve Ousley, Ph.D.
Supervising Scientist
Department of Anthropology

"Programs such as this one create research experiences that turn students' interests and hobbies into career goals"

The National Museum of Natural History and other museums with human remains must be able to distinguish Native American remains from those of other groups, most often 19th century African Americans and Euro-Americans, in order to comply with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA). Data from 20th century Blacks and Whites has indicated that identification of groups is possible from bone measurements, the majority of these analyses, however, have focused on the skull. It has been found that postcranial bones group Blacks and Whites accurately, therefore, they should be investigated further. It would be beneficial for repatriation efforts if functions focusing on the postcrainia could be derived foruse in identification of Native American bones from the 19th century. In order to create such functions research was performed on human skeletal remains from the Terry Collection, a 19th century anatomical skeletal colletion of Black and White Americans from the St. Louis, Missouri area. Measurements were taken from the postcranial bones of 240 specimens from Terry Collection. The data was then supplemented with the National Museum of Natural History's Repatriation Osteology Lab database and analyzed on SYSTAT. From this data, a discriminant function was calculated with 94 percent accuracy in classifying an unknown as a male Native American, female Native American, male non-Native American or femal non-Native American from postcranial bones. Additionally, a function consisting of only measurements from the femur and tibia was calculated with 85 percent accuracy. These results show that 19th century African American, Euro-American and Native Americans differ enough in the measurements of their postcrania that they can be reliably separated using discriminant functions. These functions can be utilized in the identification of museum and archaeological specimens in order to aid in compliance with NAGPRA regulations.