Identifying Racial Affinities in Skeletal Remains: Utilizing Infracranial Non-Metric Traits and the Rubison Procedure to Determine Racial Identity

Previous research addresses the use of non-metric traits in attributing racial affinity of skeletal remains in forensic investigations. Finnegan and McGuire (1979) examine six statistical classification systems for discrete variables and find the Rubison procedure to be superior. This analysis 1) examined whether infracranial non-metric traits are sufficiently discriminatory as to accurately place a single skeleton into a particular population and 2) tested Rubison's procedure empirically using the broader racial categories necessary in forensic applications. Eight bilateral traits of the hands and feet were recorded on White, Black, Asian, Hispanic and East Indian populations to develop a statistical database. The traits were also recorded on test skeletons of known racial affinity, representing typical forensic case studies. The Rubison procedure was utilized to determine the racial identity of each of the test skeletons. The overall misclassification rate of 54% suggested that this method does not prove to be a sufficiently accurate method of forensic population identification.