On the reliability of non-metrical morphological sex determination of the skull compared with that of the pelvis in The Low Countries

Abstract

In order to study the suitability of the skull for sex determination, a sample of 202 adult human skeletons with pelves was analysed according to the recommendations of the Workshop of European Anthropologists (1980). The remains originated from citizens of the medieval city of Dordrecht in The Netherlands (AD 1275–1572). Sex was determined by means of non‐metrical morphological sex‐descriminant features of the skull (cranium plus mandible) and of the separate cranium and separate mandible, and compared against determination made using the pelvis. The reliability of the pelvic sex determination was verified by evaluating the position of the lowest intermediate frequency of the bimodal distribution of the degrees of sexualization of the pelvis. Contingency diagrams and tables were drawn with respect to the sex diagnosis and the degree of sexualization of (i) the skull (cranium plus mandible) and related pelvis, (ii) the cranium and related pelvis, and (iii) the mandible and related pelvis. It was concluded that sex diagnosis using the skull, cranium and mandible corresponded to that using the pelvis in 96.2 per cent (N=106), 95.7 per cent (N=140) and 69.5 per cent (N=118) of the cases, respectively. Notably, in the case of female pelves (N=64), 51.6 per cent of the related mandibles were diagnosed as ‘male’. Therefore a caveat must be entered in the use of the mandible for the determination of sex, because in the Low Countries it was found to lack reliability. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Determination of sex in South Indians and immigrant Tibetans from cephalometric analysis and discriminant functions

“…Various anthropometric studies have suggested a range of 70-94% success using mandible alone for sex determination [3,8,23,25,[28][29][30][31][32]. Barthelemy et al [17] and Schmittbuhl et al [18] studied mandibular parameters on cephalograms and obtained results which were 87.3% and 97% accurate, respectively.…”

Evaluating the Accuracy and Precision of Cranial Morphological Traits for Sex Determination

“…Gonial angle was the only single mandibular feature of the four evaluated to perform well for accuracy and precision in this analysis, scoring 80.0% and 86.0%, respectively. Maat et al (20) likewise report poor performance of the morphology of the mandible as a sex indicator, particularly when evaluated as an isolated element. These results confirm the poor reliability of individual features of the mandible in this study for sex assessment of unknown skeletal remains.…”

“…These results confirm the poor reliability of individual features of the mandible in this study for sex assessment of unknown skeletal remains. Owing to the difficulty in visually assessing the degree of sexual dimorphism of dentition, and the consequent potential for increased error when making a sex assessment on a single, isolated mandible (20), it is recommended that both metric and morphological assessments be undertaken where possible. These recommendations should also be applied to cases that wholly consist of fragmentary or incomplete mandibles that possess limited criteria for analysis.…”

Application of osteology to forensic medicine

“…The gonial angle formed between the body and ramus is less obtuse than in the female. Calcagno (1981) and Maat et al (1997) found that accuracy of sexing was seriously affected by the size of the mandible. More recently Loth andHenneberg (1996, 1998) described a flexure in the posterior border of the ramus that was present in male, but absent in female mandibles, which they claimed sexed with an accuracy of 94%.…”