Investigating the Future of Adult Age Estimation

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

According to Buikstra and Ubelaker (1994), there are seven primary categories for the age estimation of osteological remains. However, other age categorization schemes exist which differ slightly in their strategies. Moreover, life stages over 50 years of age are poorly represented among most categorization schemes. It was observed that comparative analysis of the different categorization schemes may lead to better understanding of fellow bioarchaeologists’ methods and overall improved communication of findings. The main objective of this poster is, then, to present the results of a survey aimed at determining factors that influence adult age estimation in skeletal analysis, such as the thought processes impacting the delineations between age ranges of skeletal adults and, notably, how academics and professionals distinguish stages of life after age 50. An IRB-approved survey has been developed and is being disseminated anonymously via Qualtrics through various professional networks of archaeologists and anthropologists who have a connection to bioarchaeological analyses. Results from this survey will elicit both qualitative and quantitative data which will illuminate perceptions of how bioarchaeologists approach interpreting age-at-death estimates from the skeleton.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37622.0