A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE ROLE OF ANTHROPOLOGY IN PUBLIC POLICY

In comparison with the other social and behavioral sciences, there has been a general lack of anthropological input or interest in public policy.
This absence from the public policy arena has been the result of both historical developments and theoretical biases within the field. Nevertheless, there have been certain periods when significant numbers of anthropologists have worked in policy areas-the 1930s. World War Il-but even then their influence was not great. However, in recent years we have witnessed a rapidly growing emphasis on public policy in applied anthropology which promises to give the discipline the opportunity to become atruly holistic policy science.
In addition to the discussion of the factors which have impeded and, more recently, contributed to anthropological involvement with public policy, each of the symposium papers is briefly introduced.     

Developmental Markers in Adolescence: Implications for Studies of Pubertal Processes

There is inconsistency in the outcome measures of biological and psychosocial studies using measures of puberty as a predictor. For example, some studies show that maturational timing may have differential influences (positive, negative, or no effect) depending on the specific disorder, dimension of measure, and gender. Other studies have suggested that some effects may be more directly linked to pubertal stage or hormone concentrations rather than timing per se. This study outlines several conceptual and methodological issues that may be relevant to addressing these inconsistencies, in the context of examining data from a study of maturational hormones obtained from a unique longitudinal cohort of 24 girls (age 10.0 ± 1.6 years) and 36 boys (age 10.4 ± 1.6 years) in the early part of puberty, where the developmental trajectory of these hormones were tracked annually in 65% of the sample. We explored the contributions of measures of pubertal growth and sociodemographic factors on hormone concentrations. In brief, it appears that no single measure best captures the maturational processes during puberty and suggests that multiple processes are occurring in parallel. Several conceptual and methodological implications are discussed that may guide investigators in interpreting existing studies of pubertal timing and behavior as well as in conducting future studies.     

Evaluating the Accuracy of Cranial Indices in Ancestry Estimation Among South African Groups

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.     

Application of Fordisc 3.0 to Explore Differences Among Crania of North American and South African Blacks and Whites,

Using discriminant function analysis, classification accuracies for ancestry and sex in white and black South Africans were compared using North American (FDB), African groups in Howells (HDB), and South African (SADB) databases in FORDISC 3.0. (FD3). Twenty‐four standard linear measures were collected from a total of 86 black and 101 white crania obtained from the Pretoria Bone Collection. White and black South Africans classified 73% correctly in FDB, 55% correctly in HDB, and 71% correctly in SADB. The percentage of atypical cases was higher with FDB than SADB. In all three databases, misclassification occurred more with sex than ancestry revealing differences in sexual dimorphism between population groups. Broad ancestral differences may explain low misclassification rates for ancestry. FD3, with a modern South African reference sample, can assist South African anthropologists to standardize methodology and to justify procedures for estimating ancestry.     

Sex Estimation of Infants Between Birth and One Year Through Discriminant Analysis of the Humerus and Femur

Estimation of sex when investigating subadult skeletal remains is largely problematic because of unreliable and inaccurate results. Despite the limitations encountered with skeletal material, the medical literature clearly demonstrates differences between males and females in utero that persist through life. The current study investigates sexual dimorphism in the long bones of the humerus and femur for individuals between birth and 1 year of age. A radiographic sample amassed from Erie County Medical Examiner's office includes 85 femoral and 45 humeral images for analysis in relation to sex. Measurements for lengths and breadths were collected through tpsDig software. Discriminant analysis proved to be the most successful method, with error rates of 3% when utilizing maximum breadth at midshaft of the femur and 11% with humerus maximum distal breadth. This research demonstrates that it is possible to correctly classify sex of unknown subadult remains when comparing them to a known sample.