ABSTRACT
Physical anthropologists who work only with ancient remains may be lulled into a sense of false security regarding their ability to designate individual skeletal remains as being of a certain sex and a specific age and perhaps to diagnose a lesion and associate it with a degree of disability. Such pronouncements on ancient remains are unlikely to be questioned, except rarely by rising graduate students or rival colleagues in need of a controversy. Unfortunately, the pronouncer cannot be proven right or wrong, as the next of kin are long dead. Forensic anthropologists, however, quickly learn that an error in assigning sex or a too narrow or inaccurate assessment of age will be discovered when the unknown remains are identified, unless, of course, the error results in non-identification.
