Human skeleton

Florida Atlantic University (FAU) curates several collections containing Native American human skeletal remains. Some of these collections have not been inventoried nor have they been registered in the National Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) database. As such, FAU is out of compliance with federal regulation and at risk of incurring penalties. I have inventoried the human remains and determined the minimum number of individuals for three of these collections (Canal Point 2, Canal Point 3 and Belle Glade Mound). I have also compiled both an archaeological and cultural history for these sites, as well as participated in consultations with Native American tribes in an attempt to determine cultural affiliation. This will assist FAU in its ongoing efforts to comply with federal regulation as well as facilitate any disposition requests made in the future.

Cranial and postcranial research on East and Southeast Asians has shown population variability between and within these two regions. Moreover, as populations vary by sex, sex differences vary by population. The purpose of this study is to provide the first descriptive and comparative analysis of two recently curated samples of complete, documented, contemporary skeletons from Thailand (N = 104) and Hong Kong (N = 94) that have not been previously studied. Sex differences reveal Hong Kong males and females as larger but less dimorphic than Thais. Stepwise discriminant function analysis of the Thai humerus and femur allowed 94%-96% sex classification accuracy. In conclusion, this research has increased our knowledge of sex and population differences in Asia and has important applications to demographic and medicolegal investigations.