Craniology

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The scientific examination and measurement of skull shapes and sizes, often to understand human or animal variation
2. The practice of analyzing skull features to classify species or infer traits related to biology and evolution
3. A field focused on skull morphology and structure to gain insights about anatomy and developmental biology

Etymology: "Craniology" is a plain technical coinage, built from "cranio-", a combining form from the Greek "kranion" meaning "skull", and "-logy", from the Greek "-logia", meaning "study of" or "discourse about". Put together, the name describes exactly what the field does: it studies the skull. The word belongs to the same family of scientific names as "phrenology" and "criminology", which share the "-logy" ending and were coined in the same period when the study of human bodies and behaviour was being systematised. Its literal sense has changed little since, though the field it names has. Early practitioners often hoped skull measurements would reveal intelligence, character or racial rank, and those claims have since been discredited. The word itself survives as a neutral label for the measuring of crania.