THE FIRST TRANSFORMATION: THE LIMITS OF MORPHOLOGY

The most technically significant outcome of the Kennewick case was the demonstration that morphological analysis — the interpretation of population ancestry from skull shape — was far less reliable than the field had assumed.

For more than a century, physical anthropologists had used measurements of skull shape to make claims about the racial or ethnic identity of ancient individuals.

These methods had been developed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in an era when scientific racism was mainstream and the concept of stable, bounded racial groups was taken for granted.

Modern genetics has shown that these categories were never as fixed as assumed.

Populations mix.

They migrate.

They change over time.

The genetic heritage of a population and its physical appearance can diverge as selective pressures shape skeletal morphology independently of ancestry.

Kennewick Man’s case made this abstract principle viscerally concrete.