Rosine Orban

Palatine sutures as age indicator: a controlled study in the elderly.

Abstract:  Vault sutures have proven their low reliability for estimating age at death in individual forensic science cases. We broke down the palatine sutures of 134 skulls (with known sex and age at time of death) into 15 subparts and 5 stages of fusion to obtain a mean coefficient of obliteration (Cp) which was then linked to five age classes. We completed this study with multiple regression equations of total palatine suture scores. We compared our results with those obtained using the Mann method on the one hand and classically segmented and scored ectocranial suture age determination methods on the other. Palatine sutures generally do not estimate age at death any better than cranial vault sutures. Despite the partly subjective aspect of suture study, palatine suture observation contributes additional information to age‐range estimation, especially in old and very old subjects where other methods lose their effectiveness.

A Healed Wound Caused by a Flint Arrowhead in a Neolithic Human Innominate from the Trou Rosette (Furfooz, Belgium)

A new case is described here of a wound caused by a flint arrowhead in the neolithic period. The specimen comes from a collective burial excavated last century in the cave Trou Rosette (Belgium). It consists of a fragment of left adult ilium. The fragment of arrowhead is located in a rounded cavity which is open in the medial surface of the bone. The CT scan and the artefact study allow us to reconstruct the scenario of the accident. The arrow pierced the musculus gluteus of the individual prior fixing in the iliac blade. The arrow tip broke at the moment of impact; its tang broke either at the moment of impact or during attempts to extract the arrow.