When Susan Goode-Null first heard about the collection that Dr. David Marshall donated to the Department of Anthropology this past summer, she felt like she had won the lottery.

Dr. Marshall, a local orthodontist who is now retired, donated a collection that includes 11 real human skulls, several skull casts, and many skeletal renderings. It also includes three human hands and more than 7,000 dental casts, all of which Dr. Marshall had amassed for his own teaching and research purposes over nearly 60 years in private practice in Syracuse.

Goode-Null, assistant professor of anthropology, says the collection is something she did not think she would have at this stage of her career. “I’d always thought it would take me five to 15 years to build this kind of collection, doing it little by little with grants and such,” she says. “The Maxwell School and the department have been very blessed to receive a collection that provides us with so many tools for research and teaching on the evolution of the human skull.”

For anthropology faculty members and students, the value of the collection lies in the multiple opportunities it provides to study the components of the human skull, as well as the evolution of modern humans. “With these pieces, students can trace evolution from fish to modern human, or of human cranial development,” Goode-Null says.

The pieces give students an opportunity to see how science has been studied over the years. Marshall had collected these artifacts over time. “Part of the intrinsic value of this collection is that it has an historical component, and to me, that is invaluable,” Goode-Null says.

She has already used some pieces—including a skull that had been exploded and pieced back together again—in a class she taught over the summer, to teach skull structure. “The students were able to see and understand how pieces of the skull fit together—by a means far superior to an illustration in a textbook,” she says.

Collection pieces will be incorporated into curricula across the department, from the introductory course in anthropology to courses in human growth and development and osteoarcheology. The collection will also enable the department to develop new courses. Goode-Null envisions that a wide range of independent study projects will be developed for students, and says the collection also has interdisciplinary value, such as being a resource for students in the University’s pre-health professions track.

The 7,000 dental casts in the collection, for example, can be used to help students learn the methodology in diagnosing dental anomalies in archeological populations. These casts provide a bounty of opportunities, as Goode-Null found five to 10 dental casts with anomalies in one box alone.

Studying the skulls helps students to form mental templates, which are useful when identifying cranial and facial bones in the field. Within her research work, Goode-Null will use the collection pieces as points of reference when she is analyzing archeological specimens.

The collection gives the Department of Anthropology, and the University, a competitive edge, Goode-Null says. “We can now do some of the same things done by universities that have access to large museum collections,” she says.

Goode-Null and her colleagues are currently performing an inventory of the collection and building a photo catalogue. She hopes to incorporate parts of the collection into an educational exhibit on evolution that can be displayed for the benefit of the campus community.                                       

—Kelly Homan Rodoski

This article appeared in the Fall 2003 print edition of Maxwell Perspective; © 2003 Maxwell School of Syracuse University. To request a copy, e-mail dlcooke@maxwell.syr.edu.