PART I 



Osteometry; Ihe Measurement of the Bones, Including the Skull* 



I. THE SKULL 

 Orientation 



Orientation of the Skull; Horizontals; Norms. — When a student 

 takes a human skull into his hands in order to study, not its bones arid 

 other anatomical features, but its contours and proportions, and seeks 

 to compare it in these particulars with a series of other skulls, he finds 

 that the slightest change of position profoundly alters the contours to 

 be examined and compared, and that it is consequently necessary to 

 establish a fixed position for all, so that they may be properly compared. 

 Furthermore, this fixed position must be universally used, as otherwise 

 comparisons of the work of several investigators, especially in the use 

 of photographs and contour curves, could not be made. 



There is thus presented at the outset the question of an exact, uniform 

 'position, in which all skulls may be readily placed, and capable of applica- 

 tion by all anthropologists everywhere. 



Assuming, as we may, that skulls should be placed upright, with 

 the median sagittal plane in a vertical position, the question resolves 

 itself into determining the exact point at which the skull should be ar- 

 rested in a rotation about a transverse axis, at right angles to this upright 

 median plane; whether for example, it should be set as it naturally rests 

 upon a level table, with the face canted back, or whether it should be 

 raised to a position more in accord with that in which the head is habit 

 ually held in life. The first position suggested is certainly not advisable 



* The author here and throughout this work use the term Osteometry in the 

 larger sense of the measurement of the skeleton and its parts in distinction from that 

 of the entire body when still clothed in flesh, or Somatometry. Historically the skeletal 

 part first measured was the skull, to the study of which the term Craniometry was 

 naturally applied, after which the word Osteometry was used for the remaining bones. 

 Aside from the skull, in which a series of bones is immovably welded together to 

 make a firm complex, thus forming a single subject for treatment, we have the pelvic 

 bones, which have but little meaning when separated. For the measurement of 

 this complex as a whole there has developed, as in the skull, a distinct term, the word 

 Pelvimetry, and for other more or less closely associated series we may need eventually 

 to coin such words as Cheirometry, Podometry, etc. There is no question, however, 

 but that a word is necessary to signify the measurements of all the skeletal parts, 

 and that that word is, Osteometry. 



35 



