CranID was created in 1992 by anthropologist Richard Wright of the University of Sydney to infer the probable geographic origin of unknown crania that are found in archaeological, forensic and

repatriation Repatriation is the process of returning a thing or a person to its country of origin or citizenship. The term may refer to non-human entities, such as converting a foreign currency into the currency of one's own country, as well as to the pro ...

cases. Wright created the program to establish uniformity in cranial morphology based on the assumption that there is a high correlation between geographical location and cranial morphology. This was the first standardized program to evaluate the similarity and dissimilarity of cranial morphological characteristics of an unknown

cranium The skull is a bone protective cavity for the brain. The skull is composed of four types of bone i.e., cranial bones, facial bones, ear ossicles and hyoid bone. However two parts are more prominent: the cranium and the mandible. In humans, the ...

and the database.

Software

CranID is a free software program that utilizes multivariate

linear discriminant analysis Linear discriminant analysis (LDA), normal discriminant analysis (NDA), or discriminant function analysis is a generalization of Fisher's linear discriminant, a method used in statistics and other fields, to find a linear combination of features ...

and nearest neighbor discriminant analysis in conjunction with 29 cranial measurements to assess the geographic origin, which can be used to infer the ancestry of an unknown cranium. CranID compares an unknown cranium with 74 geographic samples, from 3,163 crania from 39 different populations. The measurements and landmarks used in this program to compare an unknown cranium with the database consist of glabello-occipital length, nasio-occipital length,

basion The foramen magnum ( la, great hole) is a large, oval-shaped opening in the occipital bone of the skull. It is one of the several oval or circular openings (foramina) in the base of the skull. The spinal cord, an extension of the medulla oblon ...

nasion The nasion () is the most anterior point of the frontonasal suture that joins the nasal part of the frontal bone and the nasal bones. It marks the midpoint at the intersection of the frontonasal suture with the internasal suture joining the nasa ...

length, basion-

bregma The bregma is the anatomical point on the skull at which the coronal suture is intersected perpendicularly by the sagittal suture. Structure The bregma is located at the intersection of the coronal suture and the sagittal suture on the superior ...

height, maximum cranial breadth, maximum frontal breadth, biauricular breadth, biasterionic breadth, basion-prosthion length, nasion-prosthion height,

nasal Nasal is an adjective referring to the nose, part of human or animal anatomy. It may also be shorthand for the following uses in combination: * With reference to the human nose: ** Nasal administration, a method of pharmaceutical drug delivery ** ...

height and breadth, orbit height and breadth, bijugal breadth,

palate The palate () is the roof of the mouth in humans and other mammals. It separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity. A similar structure is found in crocodilians, but in most other tetrapods, the oral and nasal cavities are not truly sepa ...

breadth, bimaxillary breadth, zypomaxillary subtense, bifrontal breadth, nasio-frontal subtense, biorbital breadth, interorbital breadth, cheek height, frontal chord, nasion-bregma subtense (frontal subtense), parietal chord, bregma-lambda subtense (parietal subtense), occipital chord and lambda-opisthion subtense (occipital subtense). Each cranial measurement and their definitions were taken from W.W. Howells' data set.

Data Set

The program compares unknown crania to 74 geographical samples that are from 3,163 crania from 39 different populations from around the world. The starting point of the database is W.W. Howells' 1973 study of cranial variation of 2,524 crania from 28 populations from around the world. Added to Howells’ data are measurements of

Beduin The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu (; , singular ) are nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. The Bedouin originated in the Syrian Desert and Ar ...

crania provided by Martha Lahr. Robert Krusynski of London’s Natural History Museum provided measurements from

Poundbury Poundbury is an experimental planned community or urban extension on the western outskirts of Dorchester in the county of Dorset, England. The development is led by the Duchy of Cornwall, and had the keen endorsement of King Charles III when h ...

(a Romano-British 4th century AD site), from the

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...

in Palestine, from post-Medieval Italy, and from the Indian subcontinent. P. Raghavan and D. Bulbeck provided measurements from the Punjab area of the Indian subcontinent. Wright added his own measurements of samples from Patagonia, Medieval London, Neolithic Denmark, and an Aboriginal sample from the Sydney area (with the permission of the La Perouse Aboriginal Land Council and the

Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council (MetroLALC) is a Sydney-based organisation which works on issues surrounding Indigenous land rights. Formerly known as the Redfern Land Council, the organisation was established to facilitate development ...

). cranID runs under Windows. The package, including the manual, can be downloaded as a self-extracting EXE file from: https://app.box.net/shared/h0674knjzl After downloading, create a new folder, for example C:\cranID. Copy the downloaded file (current version is Cr6bInd.exe) to this folder. Double click on the file to unpack it. Read the opening pages of the manual for how to get going.

Uses

This program is used to determine geographical origin of skeletal remains in

archaeological Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

and forensic contexts. Due to the geographical origin of the program and the author of the program, and the many crania included in the data set, this program is mainly used by Australian and British bioarchaeologists and forensic anthropologists. Forensic anthropologists use this software to determine the ancestry of unknown skeletal remains, in medico-legal contexts. The use of this program is designed to aid forensic anthropologists in the determination of the biological profile, which includes factors such as age, sex, stature and race. This biological profile is used to determine personal identification of skeletal remains from

crime scene A crime scene is any location that may be associated with a committed crime. Crime scenes contain physical evidence that is pertinent to a criminal investigation. This evidence is collected by crime scene investigators (CSI) and law enforcement ...

s, car and plane accidents, and mass disasters. Bioarchaeologists use this program in the same way as forensic anthropologists, but in more of an archaeology context. Determining ancestry in an archaeological context allows the researcher to build information on the skeletal remains that are found in archaeological burials, which aids in the development of knowledge of the culture and its practices and customs. This program is also used by many bioarchaeologists to conduct bio distance studies of skeletal remains, by comparing craniometric measurements of found archaeological remains with craniometric measurements of known skeletal remains from medical and legal institutions.

Criticisms

Although the maker of CranID does not explicitly state that this program can infer ‘race’, many forensic anthropologists use this program, and others like it, to determine the race of an unknown individual, even though many biological anthropologists have criticized the use of the concept. A study conducted on the CranID program found that while the program is "supposed to allocate an individual skull to a specific population rather than a ‘major race’," the program did not generate persuasive allocations of individual crania to a geographical population. Another criticism is the fact that many of the measurements that are essential to this program are subject to both interobserver error and intraobserver error. Measurements between researchers can vary substantially in size and that this degree of variation in measurements can have a striking effect on the results of CranID. Due to this potential error, the results of CranID should be taken into account when assessing how accurate any findings formed by CranID are. Although the combined data set that CranID utilizes includes many geographical regions, there are still many regions that are not accounted for in this data set. According to Fenja Theden-Ringl and colleagues, the use of CranID and another forensic anthropology software program,

FORDISC FORDISC is a software program created by Stephen Ousley and Richard Jantz. It is designed to help forensic anthropologists investigate the identity of a deceased person by providing estimates of the person's size, ethnicity, and biological sex based ...

, were unable to place skeletal remains from two site found in

Arnhem Land Arnhem Land is a historical region of the Northern Territory of Australia, with the term still in use. It is located in the north-eastern corner of the territory and is around from the territory capital, Darwin. In 1623, Dutch East India Compan ...

Northern Territory of Australia The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory shares its borders with Western Aust ...

. The researchers believe that both these programs were unable to accurately assign the skeletal remains to any group due to both programs lacking Indonesian data in the databases that are used by these programs.{{Cite journal, url = http://pgimrepository.cmb.ac.lk:8180/handle/123456789/1869, title = Buried on Foreign Shores: Isotope Analysis of the Origin of Human Remains Recovered from a Macassan Site in Arnhem Land, last = Theden-Rignl, first = Fenja, date = December 2011, journal = Australian Archaeology, issue = 1, volume = 12, last2 = Fenner, first2 = Jack N., last3 = Wesley, first3 = Daryl, last4 = Lamilami, first4 = Ronald

References

External links

CranID By Richard Wright

Biological anthropology Forensic software