Terry Collection

The Robert J. Terry Anatomical Skeletal Collection is a collection of some 1,728 human skeletons held by the Department of Anthropology of the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., United States.

It was created by Robert J. Terry (1871–1966) during his time as professor of anatomy and head of the Anatomy Department at Washington University Medical School in St. Louis, Missouri from 1899 until his retirement in 1941. It was transferred to its present holders in 1967. The Terry Collection is composed of skeletons that Terry collected from the Medical School's Gross Anatomy classes during his tenure at Washington University. The majority of the remains that make up the collection came from local hospitals in the St. Louis area, as well as institutional morgues. The remains obtained from these hospitals and institutions were those of individuals who had not been claimed by relatives, effectively making the remains the property of the state. The state of Missouri decided to donate the bodies to the medical school rather than spend taxpayer money to bury them.

The collection is an important source for anthropological research because of the extensive documentation that accompanies each skeleton. Terry attempted to collect data such as morgue records, dental charts, bone inventory forms, and anthropometric and anthroposcopic forms for the majority of the skeletons in the collection. Although methods of data collection changed over the years that the collection was being amassed, the same basic information was consistently collected. This information includes name, sex, age, race, cause of death, date of death, morgue or institution of origin, permit number, and various dates and records that pertain to embalming and processing of the cadaver. Terry also collected other resources for some of the individuals in the collection such as photographs or photo negatives of cadavers, plaster death masks, hair samples, and skin samples. The skin samples, however, had to be disposed of when the Anatomy building underwent renovations in the 1960s and the room they were stored in was removed.

There have been considerable amounts of research performed utilizing the skeletal remains within the Robert J. Terry collection. Much of this research has centered around attempts to create new methods of determining biological profile (height, age, sex, and ancestry) from an individual's skeletal remains. Some of the more prominent studies have included ones such as Trotter and Gleser's stature estimation from the long bones of American Whites and Negroes, Giles and Elliot's cranial measurements for determining ancestry and sex, Işcan's ancestry determination using the pelvis, DiBennardo and Taylor's method of sex and ancestry assessment utilizing the pelvis and femur, which was later expanded upon by Işcan and Cotton, who included the tibia in the analysis. Other, more modern, studies using the Terry Collection have continued to focus on estimation of sex, ancestry, and stature as well. These include the attempt to estimate sex from the posterior portion of the ilium by Novak, Schultz, and McIntyre, Kindschuh, Dupras, and Cowgill's approach for estimating ancestry utilizing the hyoid, and Albanese's use of the clavicle, humerus, radius, and ulna to estimate sex.

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