Asia-Pacific Craniometric Data

Michael Pietrusewsky

Asia-Pacific Craniometric Data

dc.creator	Michael Pietrusewsky
dc.date.accessioned	2025-10-17T22:22:09Z
dc.date.available	2025-10-17T22:22:09Z
dc.date.issued	2024
dc.description	Craniometric Data Recorded by Michael Pietrusewsky The datasets consist of thirty-four traditional morphometric measurements recorded in 3,557 adult male [Dataset 1] and 1,818 adult female [Dataset 2] crania. The choice of measurements and the methods to record them follow the methods of Howells (1973) and Martin and Saller (1957) [Document 1]. The crania represent modern, near modern, and Late Pleistocene individuals from the Pacific Islands (Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia), Australia, Island and Mainland Southeast Asia, and East Asia (China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Mongolia). Further explanation of the abbreviations used in the datasets is given in Documents 2-4. Documents 5 & 6 provided summaries of the number of male and female crania included in the datasets.
dc.description	The crania are from 59 museum and university research collections located in New Zealand, Australia, Europe, Japan, China, Vietnam, Thailand, and the United States [Document 4]. The collections include some of the earliest known university collections (e.g., Johann Friedrich Blumenbach collection in Göttingen and the Rudolf Virchow collection in Berlin) as well as some of the largest collections in Europe that house Pacific crania such as the Musée de l'Homme (Paris), Museum für Völkerkunde (Dresden), Georg-August-Universität (Göttingen), and the Naturhistorisches Museum (Basel). A great many of the skeletons in European and American museums were acquired during colonial expansion in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Due to institutional policies and repatriation, many of the crania represented in this dataset are no longer accessible to future researchers.
dc.description	The place of origin (e.g., an island, region, indigenous group, archaeological site, or time period) and other provenience information for the crania were obtained from inventories and catalogues that accompany these collections. The majority of the crania in museum collections represent modern or near-modern individuals not likely to be more than a few hundred years old.
dc.description	Age and sex of undocumented crania were determined using standard morphometric criteria. GPM Swiss made Martin type sliding caliper, small spreading caliper, and a small coordinate caliper were used to record all measurements.
dc.description	The data were converted from ASCII text files to CSV file formats. Outlier measurements (determined using box plots) were then checked against the original recording forms and by requesting museum personnel to check doubtful measurements. Crania suspected of having been naturally or culturally modified, were either removed from the dataset or identified as such.
dc.description	The majority of the data were recorded between 1975 to 1997 and have been used in research by Michael Pietrusewsky (e.g., Pietrusewsky 1984, 1990, 1994, 2005, 2008, 2010, 2013, 2019)
dc.description	My sincere thanks to the late Stephen Ousley and Daniel Schütz (Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel) for their guidance and help with preparing my data for the Internet.
dc.description	References Howells WW. 1973. Cranial Variation in Man. A Study by Multivariate Analysis of Patterns of Differences Among Recent Human Populations. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology, vol. 67, pp. 259. Cambridge, Mass.: Peabody Museum. Howells WW 1996. Howells’ Craniometric Data on the Internet. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 101:441-442. Martin R, Saller K. 1957. Lehrbuch der Anthropologie. Third edition. Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer Verlag. Pietrusewsky M. 2019. Traditional morphometrics and biological distance: methods and an example. In: Katzenberg MA, Grauer, AL, editors. Biological Anthropology of the Human Skeleton, Third Edition. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p 547-592. Pietrusewsky M. 2013. Biological connections across the Sea of Japan: a multivariate comparison of ancient and more modern crania from Japan, China, Korea, and Southeast Asia. In: Pechenkina K, Oxenham, M, editors. Bioarchaeology of East Asia: Movement, Contact, Health. Gainesville: University Press Florida. p 143-178. Pietrusewsky M. 2010. A multivariate analysis of measurements recorded in early and more modern crania from East Asia and Southeast Asia. Quaternary International 211: 42-54. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2008.12.011 Pietrusewsky M. 2008. The modern inhabitants of Island Southeast Asia: a craniometric perspective. In: Indriati E, editor. Proceedings of the international seminar on Southeast Asian paleoanthropology: recent advances on Southeast Asian paleoanthropology and archaeology. Laboratory of Bioanthropology and Paleoanthropology, Faculty of Medicine, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. p 185-201. Pietrusewsky M. 2005. The physical anthropology of the Pacific, East Asia, and Southeast Asia: a multivariate craniometric analysis. In: Sagart L, Blench R, Sanchez-Mazas A, editors. The Peopling of East Asia: Putting Together Archaeology, Linguistics, and Genetics. London: RoutledgeCurzon. p. 203-231. Pietrusewsky M. 1994. Pacific-Asian relationships: a physical anthropological perspective. Oceanic Linguistics 33(2):407-430. Pietrusewsky M. 1990. Craniofacial variation in Australasian and Pacific populations. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 82:319-340. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.1330820309 Pietrusewsky M. 1984. Metric and non-metric cranial variation in Australian aboriginal populations compared with populations from the Pacific and Asia. Occasional Papers in Human Biology no. 3. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.
dc.description.abstract	The datasets consist of thirty-four traditional morphometric measurements recorded in 3,557 adult male [Dataset 1] and 1,818 adult female [Dataset 2] crania. The crania represent modern, near modern, and Late Pleistocene individuals from the Pacific Islands (Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia), Australia, Island and Mainland Southeast Asia, and East Asia (China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Mongolia). The majority of the data were recorded between 1975 to 1997 by Michael Pietrusewsky, data used in his published research.
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/10125/111389
dc.title	Asia-Pacific Craniometric Data