University of Virginia Library

Conclusions on Bone Material

This season's series, if we may grace this fragmentary group of
bones with that title, offers little scope for the wielding of calipers.
The empty spaces in the above schedule clearly point to the unsatisfactory
condition of the skeletons, but those filled in call attention just
as strikingly to the fact that although a skeleton may be crushed, its
usefulness is not entirely lost.[25] "Morphological features which can be
observed and described but cannot be measured are probably of greater
anthropological significance than diameters and indices."[26] A majority
of these observations can be taken on skeletal material which in the old
days would have been considered osteometrically hopeless.

"Unfortunately the personal equation of the observer inevitably
enters into the graduation of such morphological observations. It has
long been my custom to grade and record morphological features with
respect to their development as compared with my judgment of average
development in adult male Europeans. The reader may inquire, `What
kind of "adult male European" is referred to?' My conception of the
adult male European is essentially that of a Northwestern European
of stature 170 cm. or more, of moderate muscularity, with a cranium
neither markedly dolicocephalic nor pronouncedly brachycephalic, and
with a face neither short and broad nor long and narrow, but of medium
proportions. Other features, such as are individually observed and
graded, would conform to the mode. Brow-ridges would not be very
strongly marked, for example, nor would the chin eminence be poorly
developed. Taking this hypothetical average male European as a
standard, I grade features on the following scale: absent, small or

submedium, medium, large or pronounced, and very pronounced. I
am confident that an experienced anatomical observer who has practised
this method for many years, as I have done, can attain to a considerable
degree of accuracy and consistency in making these morphological
observations. Of course, sets of observations made by different
observers are not necessarily strictly comparable. However unsatisfactory
one may consider such qualitative observations, he must admit
that they are better than nothing at all. They lend themselves to a
measure of statistical treatment and are certainly superior to the
vague and general descriptions of skull `types' which many craniologists
append to their metrical studies."[27]

In view of T. Dale Stewart's recent note[28] concerning "different
types of cranial deformity in the pueblo area," it is interesting to find
that, where the skulls of this group were not too broken for observations,
the lambdoid type of deformation prevailed. He pointed out that
this type of deformity seems to be limited to Southwestern Colorado,
Chaco Canyon, and the Zuñi and Allentown regions. It is in these
same areas that we find a spread of the Chaco type culture. Thus a
skeleton becomes just as much an artifact as a potsherd is an artifact.
Wherever the Chaco people migrated after 1100 A. D., they probably
carried with them their custom of lambdoid deformation.

Arthritis was a common ailment in Chaco, if we can judge by this
fragmentary collection. Skeleton No. Bc 50 60/5 had an arthritic foot
and showed compression fractures in the dorsal vertebrae. Bc 51 60/1
exhibited the head of a radius with arthritic lesions.

No. Bc 51 60/4 displays an ossification of the ligamentum apicis
dentis epistrophei.

In themselves the observations above prove nothing. They represent,
however, all that could be done in a physical anthropological way
to what appeared to be on first sight nothing but a pile of broken
bones. A sufficient number of seasons' analyses will compile into a
series adequate for conclusions, where otherwise existed a vacuity.
Such a small series of fragmentary skeletons, even though from a single
identified culture level, Pueblo II, offers little in significant results, but
its immediate importance lies in the possibility of comparisons of data
from other larger groups. T. Dale Stewart, Assistant Curator of Physical
Anthropology in the National Museum, has ready for publication his
measurements and observations on a series of about 100 skeletons from
the Chaco Canyon, and this material may be expected to throw considerable
light upon our problems.[29]