Modern techniques of optical 3D measurements such as photogrammetry, computer tomography, laser 3D scanning provide new possibilities for acquiring accurate 2D and 3D data of high resolution, thus creating new conditions for anthropological data analysis. Traditional anthropological manual point measurements can be substituted by analysis of accurate textured 3D models, which allow to retrieve more information about studied object and easily to share data for independent analysis. The paper presents the vision-based techniques for anthropological measurement and investigation needed in various applications, such as morphometric analysis, craniofacial identification, face approximation and other. Photogrammetric methods and their practical implementation in the automatic system for accurate digital 3D reconstruction of anthropological objects are described.