Auricular Surface to Estimate Adult Age

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From the course by Universiteit Leiden

Osteoarchaeology: The Truth in Our Bones

252 ratings

Universiteit Leiden

Osteoarchaeology: The Truth in Our Bones

252 ratings

This course is about what we can learn from examining the human skeleton, and how we can use this knowledge to reconstruct the lives of people who lived in the past. In archaeology and anthropology, human skeletal remains can provide unique insights into the past and the present; insights that cannot be gained otherwise. These insights are explored in five main themes spread out over five weeks of learning. First, it is shown how age-at-death, sex and stature can be estimated by the close examination of (archaeological) skeletal remains. In subsequent modules it is shown how human bones can provide information about the diseases and injuries that people suffered from and what they ate. Also, it is shown how the human skeleton provides information about the kinds of activities that people engaged in and about how they migrated and moved around their landscapes. In this course, you will examine all aspects of the human skeleton that can provide us with information about these different facets of life. Together we will explore the scientific field that is known as human osteoarchaeology. - Human, because it is about us and our ancestors, - Osteo, because it is about our bones, - Archaeology, because we use this information to better understand the behaviors and events experienced by past people. During the course, you will decipher the clues left behind in the skeletons of past peoples with the methods and techniques that are presented. You may also discover some clues hidden in your own skeleton and what they reveal about the life that you are living. Want to know more? You can take a look at the course trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJi22TxzpRw

From the lesson

Bones to Biography & Demography

Welcome to the first content module of this course! This week is all about introducing you to the primary things that we can learn from nearly all human skeletons. Who are the people who lived in the past? Are they men, women or children? How old did they become, and how tall did they get? We can answer these questions by studying a range of bones contained in the human skeleton. Here, we will be showing you exactly how to do that, and hope you will learn a lot!

Longbone Length to Estimate Subadult Age2:50

Dental Formation to Estimate Subadult Age2:42

Pubic Symphysis to Estimate Adult Age2:58

Auricular Surface to Estimate Adult Age4:17

Using the Phenice Traits to Estimate Sex2:46

Using Longbone Length to Estimate Stature1:41

Meet the Instructors

Andrea Waters-Rist
Assistant Professor
Faculty of Archaeology

Hi, everyone and

welcome to the instructional video on the auricular surface age estimation method.

The auricular surface is also on your pelvis.

However, it's on your os coxa more towards the back,

where your os coxa articulates with your sacrum.

And often, it's more commonly found in archeological contexts,

because it's more durable than the pubic symphysis.

As Dr. Waters-Rist presented in our videos,

there are five features that are scored using the auricular surface method.

This is transverse organization, surface texture,

microporosity, macroporosity and apical changes.

Transverse organization is the transverse billowing or

striation, moving of the surface of the auricular surface.

This is more pronounced in the earlier phases and

then gets lost towards the older stages of life.

Surface texture is presented by a finely granular surface texture in earlier phases

and then transitions into patches of contact bones or

more dense bone toward the older phases of life.

Microporosity presented by little holes,

that are smaller than one millimetre in diameter.

Whereas, macroporosity are holes that are larger than one millimetres in diameter.

Apical changes are changes that occur in the apex, or

border on part of the auricular surface, where you can see osteophytic lipping.

So little bony outgrowths or the bone just becomes more irregular.

And there are different areas of the auricular surface that

we need to score these features on.

So as I just mentioned, there's the apex

that you need to score, the apex change is on.

Apex is located here but there's also the regular auricular surface that changes

throughout time as well and then you can divide the auricular surface in two.

So you have a superior face and

an inferior face.

So, if you apply these features on the auricular surface you can score

each of these features using a score between one and five or one and three.

If you look at transverse organization on this individual,

you can see the transverse organization is completely gone.

Therefore, the score of this feature is a maximum of five.

Surface texture is visible in these little fractures of dense bone

which as I mentioned occurs towards older end of the age spectrum.

So we can also say that this is a maximum score of five out of five.

Microporosities are actually only visible in small portions on the superior

of the auricular surface.

Therefore, this feature gets a score of two out of three.

Macroporosity, however, is visible on the entire surface, and

therefore gets a score of three out of three.

Apical changes, as you can see here, the border is somewhat irregular and

there's even somewhat lipping present.

Therefore, this feature gets a 3 out of 3,

if you add these scores up, you get a score of 18.

Whilst 19 is actually the maximum score you can get using this method.

Therefore, we can already say that this individual is somewhat

towards the older age range of this method,

18 translates into an age face of 7 and 7 has a mean age of 72.25.

But as Christine said, there are age ranges attached to these mean ages.

And the age range of this phase is 53 to 92 which is a slightly smaller age

range than the method presents in previous video but it's still a large age range.

Yet, if we combine these two methods we can already say that this individual

is somewhat of an older individual.

A middle elder adult but probably more likely an old adult.

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