Lauren Swift

• PhD Student at The University of Western Australia

Northwest Arabia is marked by tens of thousands of monumental burial structures, most of which appear to have been built during the Bronze Age. These funerary features range from simple cairns and tower tombs through to large ‘pendant’ burials with elaborate tail constructions. Yet despite their clear presence across the landscape, comparatively li...

The present study analyzes morphological differences femora of contemporary Japanese and Western Australian individuals and investigates the feasibility of population affinity estimation based on computed tomographic (CT) data. The latter is deemed to be of practical importance because most anthropological methods rely on the assessment of aspects...

The present study analyzes morphological differences in the pelvis of Japanese and Western Australian individuals and investigates the feasibility of population affinity classification based on computed tomography (CT) data. The Japanese and Western Australian samples comprise CT scans of 207 (103 females; 104 males) and 158 (78 females; 80 males)...

The estimation of ancestry is important not only towards establishing identity but also as a required precursor to facilitating the accurate estimation of other attributes such as sex, age at death, and stature. The present study aims to analyze morphological variation in the crania of Japanese and Western Australian individuals and test predictive...

The ability to differentiate individuals based on their biological sex is essential for the creation of an accurate anthropological assessment; it is therefore crucial that the standards that facilitate this are likewise accurate. Given the relative paucity of population-specific anthropological standards formulated specifically for application in...

Since the 1970s, monumental stone structures now called mustatil have been documented across Saudi Arabia. However, it was not until 2017 that the first intensive and systematic study of this structure type was undertaken, although this study could not determine the precise function of these features. Recent excavations in AlUla have now determined...

It has been empirically demonstrated that the application of anthropological standards, developed using populations geographically or temporally disparate from that of a decedent, negatively impacts on classification accuracy. Therefore, there is a real need for population specific methodologies to ensure that accurate estimations of biological att...

Recent excavations undertaken by the Aerial Archaeology in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (AAKSA) project have recovered significant skeletal material, evidence for funerary offerings, including jewelry, and the earliest chronometrically dated domestic dog in the Arabian Peninsula. Despite being heavily disturbed by recent looting, these monumental fu...

In the discipline of forensic anthropology, the concept of population specificity ensures that the most accurate methodologies are applied to a given set of skeletal remains. It has been shown that the use of sex estimation standards derived using a population that is temporally and/or geographically removed from the population of the decedent resu...

Technological advancements in forensic imaging have had tremendous flow-on benefits to the professional practice of forensic anthropology, not only in respect of case-work analyses, but in facilitating empirical research that has validated and/or improved existing, and introduced novel, methods into the discipline. Some of the pioneering practical...

The reconciliation of skeletal and chronological age is of paramount concern in the context of criminal proceedings involving living individuals, who frequently lack any associated identification documentation, and are referred to the criminal justice system. It is important to appreciate that skeletal and chronological ages are not the same measur...