[Methodologic reflections on the establishment and interpretation of group median sagittal contours of the skull]

The normal lateralis is by far the most interesting of the normae of cranium, being that which contour is usually drawn to illustrate the description of the skull. The methods to assemble individual cranial profiles to group-profiles in order to get a typological impression of a random sample vary considerably. Some of these methods are discussed in this paper. On the basis of six medieval skulls from Remlingen (district Wolfenbüttel, Lower Saxony) an attempt is made to obtain a better comparability of form-variation in the cranial profiles by eliminating the factor of different length. Additionally a comparison of the single elements of the cranial profile is made and a new method for the drawing of group-profiles is recommended, which provides smaller differences in the form of the skulls compared than former methods.