The main idea behind age assessment in adults is related to the analysis of the physiological degeneration of particular skeletal structures with age. The main issues with these procedures are due to the fact that they have not been tested on different modern populations and in different taphonomic contexts and that they tend to underestimate the age of older individuals. The purpose of this study was to test the applicability and the reliability of these methods on a contemporary population of skeletal remains of 145 elderly individuals of known sex and age. The results show that, due to taphonomic influences, some skeletal sites showed a lower survival. Therefore, the methods with the highest percentage of applicability were Lovejoy (89.6%) and Rougé-Maillart (81.3%), followed by Suchey-Brooks (59.3%), and those with the lowest percentage of applicability were Beauthier (26.2%) and Iscan (22.7%). In addition, this research has shown how for older adults the study of both acetabulum and auricular surface may be more reliable for aging. This is also in accordance with the fact that auricular surface and the acetabulum are the areas more frequently surviving taphonomic insult.

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associated with human trafficking and, in particular, the specific issue of pregnancies and abortion requests resulting from sexual violence. This problem was highlighted by McGinn and Casey, 6 who claimed that refugee women escaping from conflict violence created the need for better targeting of reproductive health services and psychosocial services in refugee settings. It is the responsibility of humanitarian non-governmental organisations and of the accepting countries to provide safe abortions to women who become pregnant as a result of rape and adequate ethnopsychiatric care for posttraumatic stress disorder. This care will improve women's health and human rights and save lives. 7 Furthermore, there are criminalistic issues to be considered. Generally, the fetuses from abortions are not preserved for possible DNA analysis. However, a recent criminal case in Milan in which eight Somali victims of torture recognised their persecutor and rapist, who also had arrived in Milan, urged us to reconsider the importance of such material as legal evidence against perpetrators. We declare no competing interests.

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