Sex determination of Aboriginal crania from coastal New South Wales, Australia
Abstract
Professor N. W. G. Macintosh, Department of Anatomy, University of Sydney, initiated and recommended this project and directed us to the relevant material which has been procured and assembled by him over a period of some 15 years. We acknowledge his assistance and his reading of the final manuscript. Through him we express our sincere thanks and appreciation to Dr. J. W. Evans, Director, Mr. F. D. McCarthy, Ethnologist, and the Trustees of the Australian Museum, Sydney, for the continuing loan of 49 crania; also to Dr. Clarence E. Percy, O.B.E., (formerly) and Dr: John Laing (presently) Director of the Division of Forensic Medicine of the Department of Public Health, N.S.W., through whose collaboration 42 crania of the series here described have become the property of this Department. Their continuing interest in, and consultation on, this material are much appreciated. Three relevant crania in the Macleay Museum, Sydney, were kindly made available by the Curator.
Crania from coastal New South Wales are exceptionally rare. Few if any are known to be located in other State or overseas museums, and there is no publication specifically dealing with a coastal New South Wales series. Some are included, but not specifically identified, in Fenner's 188 skulls from total New South Wales (1939). Twenty male and 12 female coastal crania are identified in Hrdlicka's 1928 catalogue, one was described by Krause in 1897, three are mentioned in Macintosh's (1949) catalogue of Macleay Museum crania and one by Klaatsch (1908). It is curious that in one of the earliest settled regions of Australia there should be greater dearth of Aboriginal skeletal material than in most other regions. An attempt to build up a series of 100 coastal New South Wales crania began in this Department in 1946, and a series of 117 is now available for analysis.
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