Sex estimation is a fundamental component of demographic information for skeletal collections. When collections are undocumented, it is important to have established and accurate methods to determine sex. Many methods have been used since the 1800s. These methods, both morphological and metric, primarily focus on estimating sex on the pelvis, cranium, mandible, humerus and femur. The aim of this research is to establish which types of methods and which major bones are the most accurate for identifying sex in skeletons, especially when the pelvis is in poor condition or missing. A total of 67 morphological and metric methods were assessed on 294 adults from four diverse known sex samples. The study included assessment of 23 methods on 120 juveniles from two of the samples. The results indicate that while morphological methods are a reliable tool to sex adult skeletons, there are metric methods that are equally reliable, especially in the absence of the pelvis. Initial research in sex estimation of juveniles yielded several methods which scored over 75% accuracy when the samples were broken down into five distinct age groups. The study also demonstrated other possible uses for sex estimation, such as measuring variability in bones through hyper-sex codes (-2, +2) used in morphological methods, exploration of gender identification presented in two case studies, and exploring the effect of skeletal adaptation from occupation on sexual dimorphism in two African-American samples who share a common history but lived in different geographical locations.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:746457 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Harrison, Donna |
| Contributors | Waldron, T. ; Hillson, S. |
| Publisher | University College London (University of London) |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1545099/ |
Page generated in 0.0016 seconds