Techniques for siding manual phalanges

Identifying the anatomical origin of skeletal elements is a basic and important part of a forensic anthropological investigation, but techniques for determining the side and ray of the phalanges are conspicuously scarce in the physical anthropology literature. Features of particular phalanges are important to aspects of archaeological and paleoanthropological studies, as well as for identification and trauma analysis in forensic cases. Correct siding of phalanges may therefore be quite critical in certain contexts. This study evaluates several siding techniques previously developed and/or described in a recent study by Case and Heilman (2000). Unlike in their study where observers were provided all phalange positional information except for side, observations in this study were undertaken with no positional information provided thus making the examinations more similar to those performed in a forensic context. Tests of phalange siding techniques were carried out on two skeletal samples: the Terry Collection at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History where the ray and side of phalanges are documented and phalange collections are often complete, and the Bass Collection at the University of Tennessee where phalange positional information is undocumented and where phalange collections are seldom complete. The features described by Case and Heilman were found to work quite well. In the documented (Terry) sample, there was a high rate of correct siding, up to 100% for several phalanges. In the undocumented (Bass) sample, the features could be used to side the phalanges to a reasonable degree of certainty, and certainty increased when both sides of a particular phalange were present. Finally, several other useful siding and ray identification features were identified.