Developing the protocol for paleoauxological study
Introduction. Paleoauxology tends to be associated with studies on long bone length variation relative to the dental age. However, in studies of growth and development and in clinical practice, criteria of biological maturity, other than dental age and longitudinal growth, are used as well (e.g. skeletal maturity). In addition, dental wear of deciduous and permanent dentition also shows significant correlation with the age of non-adult individuals. In this article we present the review of literature sources and methodological approaches, related to the primary analysis of non-adult remains as regards their age-related changes. The aim of this study is to present and substantiate a paleoauxological protocol for data collection on skeletonized non-adult remains. Results and discussion. The proposed protocol consists of three blocks: dental system, descriptive characteristics of skeletal maturity and osteometry. The emphasis is on the need to collect data from several relatively independent systems of traits, the importance of documenting the source information used to estimate the age of a child, and the problem of inter-observer discrepancies in dental age estimates. Conclusion. The authors have developed a broad research protocol encompassing the variability in growth and development of the human skeleton. Being sufficiently detailed, it can be useful to specialists who are interested in the topic and favor a detailed analysis of the non-adult skeletal remains. In a long run, the proposed approach will make it possible to unify the procedure of paleoauxological data collection.