The recent publication of the University of Edinburgh’s Review of Race and History has drawn attention to its “skull room”: a collection of 1,500 human craniums procured for study in the 19th century.

Craniometry, the study of skull measurements, was widely taught in medical schools across Britain, Europe, and the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Today, the harmful and racist foundations of craniometry have been discredited. It’s long been proven that the size and shape of the head have no bearing on mental and behavioural traits in either individuals or groups.

In the 19th and early 20th century, however, thousands of skulls were amassed to enable research and instruction in scientific racism. Edinburgh’s skull room is by no means unique.

Unlike phrenology, a popular theory which linked personality traits to bumps on the head, craniometry enjoyed widespread scientific support in the 19th century because it revolved around data collection and statistics.

Craniometrists measured skulls and averaged the results for different population groups. This data was used to classify people into races based on the size and shape of the head. Craniometrical evidence was used to explain why some peoples were supposedly more civilised and evolved than others.

The vast accumulation of data drawn from skulls appealed to Victorian scientists who believed in the objectivity of numbers. It equally helped to validate racial prejudice by suggesting that differences among peoples were innate and biologically determined.

The study of skulls was central to the development of 19th-century anthropology. But before anthropology was taught at British universities, markers of supposed racial difference were studied by anatomists skilled in identifying minute differences in skeletons. The study of skulls entered the university curriculum through........

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