#bioarch

Shanidar Z is the first new neanderthal skeleton to be discovered in over a decade. The Skeleton is around 70,000 years old and based on dental attrition is a middle- to older-aged adult. The individual is articulated but truncated below the ribs. The skull lay on its left, facing south, and is highly fragmented. Directly below the skull was the left hand which was flexed. It is likely the individual was positioned supine with the shoulders and head raised and the head resting on its left side on top of the left hand. Both arms were flexed at the elbow with the left crossing the body and the right projecting laterally.

Ribcage of Shanidar Z

Fragmented Skull that has almost been flattened

Left hand, arm and upper body of Shanidar Z

You said hominid not hominin!

Bonobos

Neandertals

Indonesian hobbit

Erectus

So we had a seminar discussion today on ancestry estimation in skeletons and why, essentially, it’s bullshit…in bioarch. It’s serves no purpose especially with the amount of variation there is, not only between cultural groups, but also within them. Ancestry, race, biological affinity, whatever you wanna call it, is so variable and such a contested topic that it hardly seems fitting to even mark it. It makes the assumption that race is more of a biological truth than a cultural construct, a building block that is inherently flawed. The methods used are ever changing as are the nonmetrics used to try and quantify it, there seems to be no consensus as to what ancestry in the anthropological record even means, and people are constantly self-identifying themselves in different ways based on the situation. It is so culturally situated that trying to put biological metrics to it seems silly.

HOWE V E R

While I agree with the above viewpoints, it has to be noted that this is the stance of most bioarchaeologists. But for forensic anthropologists, or those analyzing contemporary human remains, ancestry estimation is still very much a data point that they must consider. Forensic anths, MEs, coroners, they all share the same thing: they all must record a bunch of statistics from a body in order to aid in the positive ID of a dead person. Their job is to help law enforcement not only to put away a bad guy, but to give families closure by postively identifying bodies that go through their labs. And they look at many different things: age-at-death, sex (which is it’s own problem), stature, and, you guessed it, ANCESTRY. So long as there is a box on the coroner’s report for ancestry, it will continue to be a data point they use. It is so steeped into our system that even the dead aren’t free of race. And for as many case studies there are of a negative estimation hindering investigations, there are positive estimations of ancestry and helped return a loved one to their families.

Our system is so deeply ingrained in the idea of “race” that it is hard to separate ourselves from it. And to try it may put your credibility as an expert on the line. If you write an article stating that you are a forensic anthropologist and here are all the reasons why race estimation is BULLSHIT, down the line there may be a defense attorney who uses that to deny your credibility and take you off as an expert. That loss of expert analysis could allow a murderer to go free, not to mention making it difficult for the anth to support themselves and their family.

And there are other forensic anths who actually agree that race is very much data that could and should be collected, and the reason why the methods don’t work is because: (1) you’re doing it wrong, (2) there aren’t enough nonmetric variables being collected (though there seems to be no consensus within the field as to what the right amount should be anyways!), (3) there isn’t a method developed yet that works best, or (4) there is no method developed yet that estimates for that particular race. (Which I would argue means that the whole thing is hard to quantify and has as much probability at being right than wrong so why bother anyways but whatever.)

I’m not saying that race isn’t a thing. It very much is. But trying to say race is seeped into the biology is inherently flawed and has more destructive connotations that helpful ones. Race, ethnicity, ancestry, is culture. It speaks more to the culture of a person than their biological makeup. It is their lived experience, something that may not always be visible in the bones. And while I understand that forensic anthropologists try and use a person’s “biological race” to do good, the groundwork in which that kind of thinking is based on is seeped in a history of anger, and hurt, and blood. Unless the connotation of “race” is changed, trying to quantify it and saying that “black is inherently different from white, hispanic is inherently different from asian, native american is inherently different from oceania, because of their biology” will always have more far reaching consequences.

It’s just something to keep in mind. Race isn’t a simple issue. Trying to make it neat and fit into a box, in a country that should pride itself on its diversity, will not always work as well as you think.