Some of Jantz's more current research involves quantitative
osteometric and anthropometric variation among
Native American populations, including an analysis of the work of
Franz Boas. In the early 1900s, Boas conducted an anthropometric study showing the
plasticity of the
human body in response to environmental changes. Testing the skeletal measurements of children of immigrants to the US, he found that their measurements were closer to the American mean than to the mean of their home countries. Boas saw this as an argument that nutrition and environment was more important in determining body measurements than racial background, and his study was widely seen as discrediting racial anthropometry. In 2002, Jantz conducted a reassessment of Boas' study, the first time anyone had examined the validity of Boas’ work. Specimens from Jantz's research ranged in age from 10,000 years old to the modern period. In his reassessment, Jantz argued that Boas’ original claims about the variations in skeletal plasticity between
European and
American born children was flawed, stating that he could find only insignificant differences between European and American born children. He also argued that exposure to the environment in America did not affect the children's
crania. Jantz claims that his work discredited that of Boas although his own study has received criticism. Jonathan Marks – a well-known physical anthropologist and former president of the General Anthropology section of the
American Anthropological Association – has remarked that this reassessment of Boas's work "has the ring of desperation to it (if not obfuscation), and has been quickly rebutted by more mainstream biological anthropology". In 2003, anthropologists Clarence C. Gravlee, H. Russell Bernard, and William R. Leonard reanalyzed Boas's data and concluded that most of Boas's original findings were correct. Moreover, they applied new statistical, computer-assisted methods to Boas's data and discovered more evidence for cranial plasticity. His other research also includes looking at microevolutionary forces acting on
Aleut and
Eskimo populations of the
Bering Sea using anthropometrics. == Awards ==