20185001(en)/10-Discriminating Functions to Estimate Sex from Long Bones in Colonial Populations of the Central West of Argentina

Incomplete skeletons and commingled human bones constitute a significant volume of recovered material in American colonial temples. This poses the need to perform procedures that allow the sexual assignment of each element in order to deepen various types of bioanthropological studies. The objective of this work is to develop discriminant functions to estimate sex from long bones in a sample recovered in three colonial temples of Mendoza (Argentina) from the 17-18TH centuries. The sample contains 61 adult individuals (complete primary burials) with sex determined from pelvic and cranial indicators. In each case, a set of measurements of the humerus, radius, ulna, clavicle, tibia and femur was taken to generate discriminant functions. The functions thus developed allowed to estimate the sex with a high degree of reliability. The femur (92.1%) and the humerus (90%) were the elements with higher average percentages of correct estimates, and with higher percentages in males than in females. The ulna (79.3%), clavicle (79.2%), tibia (75.9%) and radius (73.3%) obtained a lower classification ability. The results are discussed considering the genetic, environmental, and taphonomic factors of the studied sample.

 

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