Sex estimation of the human os coxae in archeological contexts: An advocacy of using both Diagnose Sexuelle Probabiliste and Brůžek's morphoscopic method

Abstract

The aims of this article are (1) to present the applicability of two methods of sex estimation of the coxal bone—the Diagnose Sexuelle Probabiliste (second version, DSP2) and the Brůžek's morphoscopic method (statistical version, SBMM)—on a large archeological metasample; (2) to provide the percentage of agreement between the two methods; and (3) to illustrate the interest to use both methods together. The metasample under study is composed of adult skeletons from several European collections spanning from the Final Mesolithic to the Early Modern period. It includes 1270 coxal bones belonging to 765 individuals. Final sex estimation provided by each method is compared for each coxal bone and for each individual. A sex estimate (female or male) has been obtained by at least one method for 1066 coxal bones, and for 685 of the individuals (83.9% and 89.5% of our sample, respectively). Incongruity between methods and/or left and right coxal bones is extremely rare. The combined use of SBMM and DSP2 yields high rates of congruent sex estimations. While DSP2 results in a lower rate of sex estimation compared to SBMM, it likely offers better inter-observer reproducibility, and their joint application significantly increases the total number of classified individuals. It is recommended to record both metric and nonmetric variables from DSP2 and SBMM on both coxal bones to increase the number of sex estimations while maintaining high reliability.