Is sex estimation from handprints in prehistoric cave art reliable? A view from biological and forensic anthropology

Morphological evidence for early dog domestication in the European Pleistocene: New evidence from a randomization approach to group differences

“…Jackknife is an iterative procedure with the number of iterations being equal to the total sample size ( n = 96). Within each iteration, one specimen is left out from the sample and its group affiliation is estimated from a DA performed on this smaller sample thus avoiding circular reasoning, that is, classifying an individual based on DA derived from sample which includes the individual itself (for details, see Kovarovic et al, 2011; Galeta et al, 2014).…”

“…Small sample size, unbalanced composition of reference groups, and ambiguity in the interpretation of morphological differences between the Paleolithic dog and Pleistocene wolf morpho‐populations make the use of randomization methods desirable to explore issues with the early dog domestication (see other applications of the randomization to DA in zoology and anthropology in Cardini & Elton, 2011; Evin et al, 2013; Galeta, Bruzek, & Lázničková‐Galetová, 2014; Kovarovic et al, 2011). The idea of the randomization experiment is to generate many randomized data sets with the same (unbalanced) sample composition as in the original data set but with group differences eliminated by random affiliation (see below) and then to assess whether DA based on the original data set performs better than the baseline estimated by randomization.…”

El artesano de La Canal dels Avellaners (Edad de Bronce, Barcelona): análisis de huellas dactilares

“…En esta investigación se ha intentado minimizar esta variabilidad, comparando las huellas antiguas con individuos de la población actual de la misma región geográfica (España). No obstante, los resultados de algunos estudios recientes muestran que los méto-dos de predicción de sexo mediante huellas tienen un éxito parcial cuando la muestra problema es de la misma población que la de referencia, éxito que se reduce con poblaciones no relacionadas (Galeta et al 2014). Este problema queda minimizado en la cerámica estudiada gracias a los valores muy altos del MRB en sus huellas.…”

Estimating age and sex: Paleodemographic identification using rock art hand sprays, an application in Johnson County, Wyoming

“…First, while sex-related differences in digit ratios are present to some degree in the majority of contemporary populations, the degree to which they appear varies considerably (Manning, 2002). Additional concern has risen regarding the application of equations derived from one population and applied to another (Galeta et al, 2014). While a valid criticism, collecting modern hand size information from the specific populations associated with archaeological sprays can be difficult and in many cases the exact population that created the sprays is unknown.…”