A Synergistic Forensic Approach to Population Affinity Estimation

Through analyzing the 20 skulls from the South Texas Applied Forensic Science center I aim to ascertain a better picture of the demography of our donors and what that means regarding the issue of ancestry estimation in Forensic Anthropology. I will also be analyzing genetic methods of ancestry estimation and how both forensic anthropology and forensic genetics can work synergistically to create new statistical software with greater accuracy. With our globalized society it is becoming more and more unlikely that we can fit ourselves neatly into the racial categories that the offices of jurisprudence would like us to fill, thus we should be tailoring our methods and practices to more reflect ourselves as biological populations of the species Homo sapiens rather than placing ourselves within antiquated racial typologies such as: Black, White, Asian, and Hispanic.