Bridget F.B. Algee-Hewitt - Remodeling Forensic Skeletal Age: Modern Applications and New Research Directions

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John Albanese Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON, Canada

Bridget F.B. Algee-Hewitt Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States

Clair L. Alston-Knox Predictive Analytics Group, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Mark D. Barry High Performance Computing and Research Services, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Jesper L. Boldsen ADBOU, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

Fred L. Bookstein

University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States

University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

Guillermo Bravo Morante

University of Granada, Granada, Spain

Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Klosterneuburg, Austria

Hugo F.V. Cardoso Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

Louise K. Corron University of Nevada, Reno, NV, United States

Eugnia Cunha

University of Coimbra, Centre for Functional Ecology, Laboratory of Forensic Anthropology, Department of Life Sciences, Coimbra

National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, Lisbon, Portugal

Susan R. Frankenberg Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, United States

Sara M. Getz Department of Criminal Justice, University of Wisconsin, Platteville, WI, United States

Laura S. Gregory Faculty of Health, Skeletal Biology and Forensic Anthropology Research Laboratory, School of Biomedical Sciences, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Jieun Kim Anatomy, Lincoln Memorial University, DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine, Knoxville, TN, United States

Lyle W. Konigsberg Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, United States

Nicolene Lottering

Faculty of Health, Skeletal Biology and Forensic Anthropology Research Laboratory, School of Biomedical Sciences, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane

Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine, Bond University, Robina, QLD, Australia

Donna M. MacGregor Faculty of Health, Skeletal Biology and Forensic Anthropology Research Laboratory, School of Biomedical Sciences, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

George R. Milner Department of Anthropology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, United States

Stephen D. Ousley Department of Anthropology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, United States

Michael H. Price Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM, United States

Luis Ros Departamento de Biodiversidad, Ecologa y Evolucin, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

Marta San-Milln

EUSES University School of Health and Sports, University of Girona, Girona, Spain

Group of Research on Clinical Anatomy, Embryology and Neuroscience (NEOMA), Department of Medical Science, University of Girona, Girona, Spain

Laure Spake Centre for Research on Evolution, Belief and Behaviour, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

Kyra E. Stull

University of Nevada, Reno, NV, United States

University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

Peter Tarp ADBOU, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

Flvia Teixeira University of Coimbra, Centre for Functional Ecology, Laboratory of Forensic Anthropology, Department of Life Sciences, Coimbra, Portugal

Svenja Weise ADBOU, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

Jieun Kim; Bridget F.B. Algee-Hewitt

Aging is a topic of considerable importance in biological anthropology. The steady number of publications and their emphasis on method development, testing, and validation provides clear evidence of sustained interest, while the history of debate over the validity of this theoretical work and their practical outcomes is testament to the depth of our collective investment. There is no denying how the reliable estimation of age-at-death from the human skeleton is of fundamental importance for the value that it brings to the field, and subfields, of biological anthropology, and to the areas of specialty and subject matter with which it interacts.

The study of age contributes to our understanding of morphological variation and the senescent process in modern population biology. As such, skeletal development and degeneration has implications that reach into the anatomical and medical fields as we, as skeletal biologists, can grapple with the effects of genetics, environment, and individual lifestyle factors on bone density, rates of fracture healing, and atypical skeletal expression. Estimating age is important among the personal identity parameters that are used in medico-legal case identification in forensic anthropology, as we seek to provide law enforcement, medical examiner, and nongovernmental agencies with the information that can help to link the unknown individual with the named person. In these circumstances, the anthropologist, working in the service of humanitarian aid and social justice, estimates skeletal age to assist in missing person, asylum seeker, and undocumented death cases. Finally, age-at-death is fundamental to the paleodemographic reconstruction of mortality profiles for skeletal assemblages in bioarcheology, allowing us to bring a better understanding of the life and death of past peoples.