Edinburgh Unit for Forensic Anthropology

 Validation of age estimation and sampling methods

Estimation of age at death by histomorphometry has experienced an increase in methods and sampling sites, expanding the arsenal available to the forensic anthropologist, with which to aid the identification of human skeletal remains. This study tests Stout & Paine (1992) and Stout et al. (1994) histological methods for age estimation on a sample of six left 4th ribs from a Greek population from Crete and attempts to ascertain if: i) the samples exhibit results within the reported errors of the original studies and ii) if results differ significantly when sampling areas of the rib not used by the original studies. Preliminary results of the study have been presented at the annual meeting of the British Association of Human Identification in Manchester, Nov 30th, 2013.