The Afterlives of Skulls

How Race Science Became a Data Science

My book project, under advanced contract with the University of Chicago Press, offers a new history of race in science, medicine, and technology. With the widespread use of DNA sequencing in analyzing human variation, many assume that measuring skulls with calipers is a long-outdated practice. The Afterlives of Skulls tells a different story: not only did the practice of using cranial data to study human racial variation continue well into the 20th century, the skulls and their data lead significant afterlives in present-day science and society. The book reveals the surprising circulations and durable legacies of cranial data, data practices, and the conviction that skulls reveal insights about human variation in the 20th century. By treating race science as a data science, a science centrally rooted in data and statistics, it reveals how the continued use of old cranial collections, measurement practices, and datasets ensured the survival of race and its attendant biases about human variation in science and technology. It shows that issues of racism are also hidden deep below the surface, in the ways we organize, collect, and reuse data. DNA did not replace the skull: I make visible how the skull and race remained at the forefront of science and technology in the 20th century.