Dry bone and virtual modality interchangeability for the estimation of sex on the human pelvis

Braun, Sandra; Schwendener, Nicole; Kanz, Fabian; Lösch, Sandra; Milella, Marco (April 2023). Dry bone and virtual modality interchangeability for the estimation of sex on the human pelvis. American Journal of Biological Anthropology, 180(S75), p. 21. Wiley

Traditional osteological methods are typically based on both visual and tactile procedures. The latter are however excluded when investigating virtual models of skeletal remains. This raises the question of the reliability of virtual anthropological data when compared with the tactile modality, an urgent topic given the steady rise of virtual methods and accumulation of imaging data in biological and forensic anthropology. Here, we address this topic and quantify the deviation between the scoring on dry bone and virtual models of sexually dimorphic features on the human pelvis.
To this aim, we applied the methods of İşcan & Derrick (1984), Bruzek (2002), Klales et al. (2012) and Bruzek et al. (2017) to 200 archaeological pelves, scoring and measuring each method-specific variable on dry bone and computed tomographic (CT) models of the same individual. We compared the scores and measurements from the two sets of observations using Cohen's κ tests and relative technical error of measurement (rTEM).
Results show that: 1) metric traits are more repeatable than nonmetric traits; b) dichotomous variables are more repeatable than ordinal ones; c) most nonmetric traits show overall acceptable κ values; d) one metric variable (depth of the great sciatic notch) stands out due to an rTEM well above 5%.
Overall, our data suggest that traditional scoring methods can be applied interchangeably to analogous and virtual specimens without obtaining substantially different information. Imprecise trait definition, more than other factors, is the main source of error between the two modalities.

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