Developments in cranial morphometrics.

This paper sets out to describe a number of traditional and novel approaches to craniometry. These include linear and angular measurements, indices, shape factors, least squares, and Fourier analysis. A study is presented in which these different techniques are applied to a phenetic analysis of the crania of a variety of living and extinct hominoids, with the aim of assessing the relative merits of different approaches. The results allow an appraisal of the stability of phenetic groupings in the face of different data and suggest that the choice of data can considerably influence the observed pattern of between-group relationships. The choice of craniometric method should be made with due regard for the questions at hand and the interpretation of phenetic relationships should allow for the particular data.