Odontometric sex discrimination in the herculaneum sample (79 AD, Naples, Italy), with application to juveniles

Abstract

Sex determination of subadult skeletal remains with satisfactory accuracy represents one of the most important limitations of archaeological research and forensic practice. Teeth are one of the most durable physical elements of an individual that remain after death, and constitute a potential source of information about the biological sex of that individual. This study was based on the skeletal remains of 117 individuals from the ancient city of Herculaneum (Naples, Italy), victims of the eruption of the nearby volcano Vesuvius on 24/25 August, 79 AD. It has been possible to develop discriminant function formulae based on dental dimensions of adult individuals whose sex had previously been determined based on descriptive osteologic criteria. These formulae were subsequently applied to the permanent dentitions of immature individuals of the same population in order to estimate their sex. The results show that the canine is the tooth with the greatest sex dimorphism in adults, providing percentages of correct assignment of sex between 76.5% and 100% depending on the dimension used. Of the 30 subadult individuals in the target sample, estimation of sex was possible for 22 individuals. Sex assignments matched those determined from descriptive characteristics of the ilia and mandible in 73.33% of the cases. The results provide some optimism that this method may be applicable to juvenile archaeological samples.

Sex estimation using cervical dental measurements in an archaeological population from Iran

“…A comparison between the two sexes showed that the classification accuracy of all functions was higher for males. This result is in agreement with other studies on cervical tooth measurements (Vodanovic et al 2007;Hassett 2011;Viciano et al 2011Viciano et al , 2013Viciano et al , 2015Zorba et al 2011Zorba et al , 2013Mujib et al 2014;Peckmann et al 2015). This means that females have a greater variation in tooth size and can more often be misclassified as male.…”

“…Discriminant function analysis for single tooth measurements also showed that the cervical measurements of the permanent canines and incisors were the most dimorphic teeth providing classification accuracy between 76.9 and 87.9 %. These results were in accordance with previous studies (Alt et al 1998;Starp 1990;Ellendt 1993;Hassett 2011;Viciano et al 2011Viciano et al , 2013Viciano et al , 2015Mujib et al 2014). In addition, it was found that second molar dimensions can be a very effective single variable for sex estimation with a classification accuracy of 83 %.…”

“…Studies on sexual dimorphism in cervical mesiodistal and buccolingual measurements have demonstrated that the canine is the most sexual dimorphic tooth (Starp 1990;Ellendt 1993;Alt et al 1998, Vodanovic et al 2007, Viciano et al 2011Hassett 2011, Mujib et al 2014, Viciano et al 2015. This is similar to the conclusion reached in the previous studies on crown mesiodistal and buccolingual measurements (Garn et al 1966;Yuen et al 1997;Işcan and Kedici 2003;Vodanovic et al 2007;Cardoso 2008;Zorba et al 2011;Khamis et al 2014).…”

“…The obtained classification accuracy rates were 100 % for both original and cross-validated data; however, this observation was based on a small sample size (n = 27, n = 22), and despite the fact that functions derived from similar size samples are reported (e.g. Viciano et al 2011), we do not recommend the use of this equation for sex estimation without a follow-up study on a larger sample. The second best discriminant function used a combination of canines, first molars and second molars (F9) with an accuracy rate of 92.3 % for both original and crossvalidated data.…”

Odontometric analysis of sexual dimorphism in permanent maxillary and mandibular molars

“…The correct identification of sex from skeletal remains is one of the main challenges in forensic anthropology and osteoarchaeology. Dental sexual dimorphism has long been acknowledged as a reliable biological feature in this respect, and studies have demonstrated that dental dimensions can be used to accurately assess the sex of skeletal remains in different populations [1][2][3][4][5][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. The present study is one of few reference studies for sex estimation using odontometric data in Iranian archaeological populations [7].…”