ObjectivesThe current paper explores the effectiveness of entheseal changes as skeletal activity markers by testing the correlation between such changes and cross-sectional geometric (CSG) properties while controlling for the effect of age and body size.
Materials and MethodsThe originality of the paper lies in capturing entheseal changes in a continuous quantitative manner using 3D microscopy. Roughness and bone resorption were recorded on zone 1 and 2 of three humeral entheses (subscapularis, supraspinatus, infraspinatus) in a documented sample of 29 male skeletons.
ResultsOur analysis found that merely 5.91% of the partial correlations between entheseal changes and CSG properties were statistically significant. In addition, two unexpected patterns were identified, namely a higher number of significant correlations on the left side entheses compared to the right side ones and a higher number of correlations between minimum roughness and CSG properties compared to mean and maximum roughness.
DiscussionThese patterns are the inverse of what we would expect if activity had exerted an important effect on entheseal change expression. Therefore, they support the lack of association between entheseal changes and habitual activity, even though various factors potentially affecting the above results are discussed.
Pelvic morphology is highly reflective of both sex and age changes in humans, making it a popular research focus in forensic anthropology. Relevant studies range from traditional descriptive to more complicated approaches involving statistical modeling, with the latter having become excessively popular in the last decades. The present study examines the performance of Bayesian statistics in age estimation based on the morphological changes observed on the iliac auricular surface. The aim is two-fold: a) to test whether a Bayesian approach can improve age-at-death estimation compared to the original Lovejoy et al. (1985a) and Buckberry and Chamberlain (2002) methods, and b) to explore the impact of adopting different samples as informative priors as well as for obtaining the transition analysis parameters. For this purpose, two modern Greek documented collections have been used, the Athens and the Cretan Collection. Our results found no clear improvement in age prediction when adopting Bayesian age estimation, with only one exception: Athenian males for the Buckberry and Chamberlain (2002) method. The choice of samples for transition analysis and as informative priors affected the results but this effect was statistically non-significant.
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