Preliminary Testing of Facial Approximation Methods for finding the Pronasale in Children

Summary

Facial approximation has been increasingly used in archaeological human remains but its accuracy in children is often uncertain due to the lack of research in this area. There are currently several methods in use to predict the nose pronasale position, but they have all been developed for use in adults. Considering that the face, including the nose, undergoes significant size and shape changes during growth, the validity of these methods in children is largely unknown. Preliminary testing of Gerasimov’s (1951,1977) method was performed on lateral cephalograms of 22 12 year-old subjects consisting of 10 males and 12 females. The x-rays were imported into Photoshop where the soft tissue outline was removed and the method was blindly tested. Testing showed that in females the estimated pronasale tends to be systematically more anteriorly located, and in males it tends to be systematically more inferiorly located. This may be related to sex-specific changes in facial growth. Additional testing of this method and quantification of differences between the estimated and real pronasale can help to determine whether or not they work on facial approximations of children.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

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