Abstract:
Historically, population differences were quantified using cranial indices. Even though the
application of indices is associated with numerous statistical and methodological problems,
the use of cranial indices to estimate ancestry persists as demonstrated by its inclusion in
several recent papers and conference presentations. The purpose of this study was to classify
207 South African crania and compare the results of five standard cranial indices to linear
discriminant analysis (LDA). New sectioning points were created to contend with low
classification accuracies (40% - 79%) and possible secular trends. Although the accuracies of
the new sectioning points increased (66% - 87%), the accuracies associated with the stepwise
LDA were higher (84%) and could classify the crania into one of the three South African
groups. The results of the study demonstrate that indices cannot compete with multivariate
techniques and should not be used in forensic anthropological analyses for ancestry
estimation.
