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Sexing human fragmented remains: exploring the sexual dimorphism of the cranial base and bony labyrinth in a Western-European identified population

par Boucherie, Alexandra
Référence Spring Forensic Science Symposium - Société Royale de Médecine Légale de Belgique (19 avril 2024: Leuven)
Publication Non publié, 2024-04-19

Communication à un colloque

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Résumé :

Estimating the biological sex of a skeleton constitutes a fundamental step of the anthropological analysis of human remains, recovered either from archaeological or forensic contexts. This estimation must be founded on reproducible, reliable, and validated methods of sexual diagnosis. Yet, this process can turn out to be a thorough challenge when confronted to very fragmented skeletons, and even more in case of subadults or burnt remains. Due to its peculiar architecture and its ontogenetic specificities, the human cranial base composed of the occipital and temporals bones – including the bony labyrinth of the inner ear – represents a promising path in designing new sex estimation methods adapted to such frequent scenarios. Combining traditional osteometry and digital tools through an exclusive metric approach, this doctoral research aims to evaluate the sexual dimorphism of the cranial base on an osteological sample composed of 611 skulls and 121 bony labyrinths from Western-European individuals – subadults and adults – of known sex. This talk will give a synthesis of the main results obtained during this study and will present the performance of the predictive models that were designed on the adult cranial base (from 77 to 87% of accuracy), the adult bony labyrinth (from 76 to 83%) and the subadult bony labyrinth (from 76 to 84 %). It also aims to discuss the necessary requirements, in terms of osteological assemblage, protocols and statistical tools, that permit to fulfil such a methodological approach in forensic anthropology.