Essay

Your essay topic is to take one method of osteological analysis to do with human identification (e.g.a method of ageing, population affinity, sexing, mobility, etc etc) and explain in plain English the assumptions, the core principles, the limitations of the method and produce on the basis of that a set of guidelines for it use.  This isn’t just a summary of a method but it is a careful exploration of a method (e.g. stature estimation using regression analysis or strontium analysis of mobility) and an evaluation of its limits. The aim is to ensure that you can evaluate and explain methods, weigh them up and assess their usefulness.  This is the sort of thing you need to be able to do both for your further research in any field but also if you have to justify your work in the field for ethics committees, courts, permit granting agencies etc. In undertaking this I suggest that you use a standard form of meta-analysis and we will discuss how to do this and workshop techniques in class.