Forensic Science International: Reports 2 (2020) 100050

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Forensic Science International: Reports

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Forensic Anthropology

New acquisitions of a contemporary Brazilian Identified Skeletal Collection

Marcus Vitor Diniz de Carvalho a , Viviane Freire Lira a, Emília Alves do Nascimento a ,
Sara Behar Torres Kobayashi a , Luciane Farias de Araújo a,b , Adriana Conrado de Almeida a,
Gabriela Granja Porto Petraki a , Eugénia Cunha b, Evelyne Pessoa Soriano a, *
a
Center for Studies in Forensic Anthropology (CEAF), University of Pernambuco (UPE), Brazil
b
Laboratory of Forensic Anthropology, Centre for Functional Ecology, Department of Life Sciences, University of Coimbra, Departamento de Ciências da Vida, Universidade de
Coimbra, Portugal

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: This short communication aims to provide the scientific community information on the new acquisitions of human
Forensic anthropology identified skeletons for the CEAF Identified Skeletal Collection of the University of Pernambuco, Brazil. It comprises
Identified skeletons 188 skeletons from both sexes, with ages ranging from 0 to 106 years-old. The addition of the new skeletons makes
this the largest contemporary identified human osteological collection of Brazil with 427 individuals, and it will
allow the development of research in diverse academic levels within the university from undergraduate to
postdoctoral research, aiming to enhance the Forensic Anthropology field in Brazil.

Introduction
It's undeniable the importance of identified human osteological
collections not only to develop methods for analyzing the biological
profile, but also to investigate the cause of death, the presence of
pathologies affecting bones, anatomical variations, the aging processes of
skeletons, bone trauma, and other relevant parameters that can be
notably important to forensic anthropology contexts. To develop and test
the methods to be applied in the formulation of the biological profile, it is
necessary to use an osteological material that possesses biographical
information associated with remains [1].
Identified human osteological collections are ordinary in European
countries, but most of them comprise individuals from the early 19th or
mid of the 20th Centuries [2,3]. However, due to human populational
variation, as a result of genetics and different levels of social progress, the
methods developed using these collections may not necessarily be applied
to other populations, especially the Brazilian one, that shows high
percentages of miscegenation.
In Brazil, the occurrence of identified human osteological collections is
a recent phenomenon [4], being more common the existence of
decontextualized remains in anatomical collections like the one present
in the Professor Dr. Manuel da Silva Braga Museum at the Federal
University of Pará [5].
The CEAF Identified Skeletal Collection had its first acquisitions in
2016. The remains were obtained from the Santo Amaro cemetery, the
largest one in the city of Recife [6], which is the capital of the State of
Pernambuco, and the ninth most populous metropolitan area of Brazil
with approximately 4,046,845 inhabitants [7]. As most of the public
cemeteries in Brazil, the majority of graves provided are temporary ones,
and for this reason, the family of deceased needs to collect the remains of
their beloved ones after two years of inhumation, in the case of Recife. The
individuals that have not had their remains collected in the timeframe
comprehended between 2015 and 2018 were legally donated to CEAF
(2018) after all the legal and bureaucratic issues were accomplished.
The report of Cunha et al. [4], concerning the Brazilian osteological
collections, highlighted the significance of the CEAF Identified Skeletal
Collection housed in the Center for Studies in Forensic Anthropology
(CEAF) of the University of Pernambuco. It is a contemporary collection,
with the oldest inhumation dating from the year 2011, with a balanced
number of individuals per sex. Until 2018, the CEAF Collection consisted
of 122 males and 117 females with ages ranging from 13 to 109 years-old.
Nowadays, this collection received 188 new skeletons with ages ranging
from 0 to 106 years old of 101 males and 87 females buried in 2016 and
exhumed in 2018, resulting in 427 skeletons (Table 1). In general, the
remains are in good state of preservation (Figure 1), and the inventory
phase has been finished. Currently, all information on the skeletons is
being organized on a database.
In the CEAF, management policies and rules for access to the collection
have to be observed by all researchers. Regarding ethical issues, there is not
a unique protocol that can be used for studying human identified skeletal
collections in Brazil so far; thus, all studies to be carried out in this collection
must be previously approved by a Research Ethics Committee, following

* Corresponding author at: Center for Studies in Forensic Anthropology (CEAF), University of Pernambuco (UPE), Av. Gal. Newton Cavalcanti, 1650, 54753-220,
Camaragibe, PE, Brazil.
E-mail address: evelyne.soriano@upe.br (E.P. Soriano).

http://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsir.2019.100050
Received 15 August 2019; Received in revised form 15 October 2019; Accepted 22 October 2019
Available online 21 December 2019
2665-9107/© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-
M.V.D. de Carvalho et al. FSIR 2 (2020) 100050

Table 1
Data on the new acquisitions and the totality of skeletons oh the CEAF Identified Skeletal Collection.
Number of skeletons/skulls Males Females Age (min- Subadults Adults aged Inhumation Exhumation
max) <20 years 100 years period period

The new 188 acquisitions 101 87 0-106 10 2 2016 2018

The whole CEAF Identified Skeletal Collection: 223 204 0-109 17 5 2011-2016 2015-2018
n=427

Fig. 1. State of preservation of most of the skeletons (>90%) of the CEAF Identified Skeletal Collection.

the Resolution of the National Health Council n. 466/12, Ministry of
Health, Brazil, which regulates research involving human beings.
Concerning the availability of data, differently from the first
239 skeletons of the collection (which only had information on sex,
age at death, date of burial, and date of exhumation), there are
information on sex, age at death, date of burial, date of exhumation,
occupation, place of birth, skin color, marital status, and cause of death
for the new 188 ones.
Overall, the age range of the collection has not changed with the new
acquisitions, even with the addition of a female fetus. Also, among the
new remains are ten individuals under the age of 20 years-old, resulting
now in seventeen skeletons in this age category (Figure 2). With a few
exceptions, the cause of death of these young individuals was mainly
reported to be due to blunt and ballistic trauma, reflecting the reality of
deaths by violence in Brazil.
The skeletons of those young individuals are crucial for teaching the
students about osteological growth, time of fusion of the bones, and how it
Fig. 2. Distribution of the skeletons by sex, according to age groups.
can be related to age at the time of death. Obtaining skeletons of children
has been proved a difficult task. The reason for not having more skeletons
of younger people, especially children, yet remains unclear. Although
17,375 children under the age of 14 died in our State through the years
2011–2016 [8], there is a limited number of donations of those skeletons,
maybe because people tend to be more emotionally attached to them and
to the idea of lives which was lost too soon. So, children's remains tend to
be transferred to another grave or private ossuary by their relatives by the
legal time for exhumation.
As said before, the information on the cause of death of the new
skeletons of the CEAF Identified Skeletal Collection was obtained from the
declaration of death which is a mandatory document for a corpse to be
buried in Brazil and contains the medical cause of death. Sepsis,
respiratory insufficiency, stroke, cardiological complications, infectious
diseases such as tuberculosis, as well as complications related to
neoplasias, are reported on the declarations of death. For the new
skeletons, the information on the place of death is available, and the
majority occurred at hospitals. However, we do not have access either to
the medical records nor to CT image scans or another type of
imaginological data so far.
The skin color was also obtained from the declaration of death.
Concerning this info, it must be stressed that we cannot trust them as
unfailing, because it is usually poorly evaluated, and is well known that
this parameter does not correctly represent a human ancestry profile,
once it can vary and be much different from the genotype, especially in a
miscegenated population like ours. Additionally, almost 60% of both
males and females were reported to be brown-skinned in their
declarations of death, which could bring even more confusion to the
evaluation of ancestry if it was solely based on this parameter.
The new skeletons, as the first ones, present different pathologies that
are being investigated, like the cases of neoplasias. Also, the anatomical
variations are being identified in order to compare the results with those
from other populations. The validation of methods for sex estimation,
such as metric and morphological analysis of vertebrae, long bones and
pelvic bones, the evaluation of cranial traits, and other studies on age
estimation are being currently carried through in CEAF by graduate and
undergraduate students.
The acquisition of the new skeletons makes the CEAF identified
human skeletal collection the largest one of Brazil currently, and it will

2
M.V.D. de Carvalho et al.
allow the development of research in diverse academic levels within the
university from undergraduate to postdoctoral research, aiming to
enhance the Forensic Anthropology field in Brazil. This collection is
available for national and international researchers to develop their
studies or to undertake projects in partnership with the CEAF.
Author contributions
All the authors have equally contributed to this publication on the
conception and design of the study, drafting the article, and final approval
of the version to be submitted.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
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