A biocultural study of nasal fracture, violence, and gender using 19th–20th century skeletal remains from Portugal

Abstract

Nasal fracture is usually described as the most common type of fracture of the facial bones, either alone or associated with other fractures. This work aims to study the nasal fracture among Portuguese individuals from the 19th and 20th centuries. The focus is on patterning in trauma in relation to gender and in the attempt to distinguish violent from accidental injury. The sample comprises 2023 (52.6% males, 47.4% females) individuals from three Portuguese identified skeletal collections who were born between 1804 and 1951 and died between 1895 and 1969. Age at death ranges between 1 and 109 years old. Nasal and other facial fractures were studied, and violent versus accidental trauma were distinguished following Magalhães et al. (2020). Nasal fracture was more frequent in males (10.4%, 101/969) than in females (5.9%, 47/800). This was true both for fracture inferred due to violence (laterally deviated fracture) and due to accident. Sixty-one point five percent (91/148) of the individuals show a lateral impact force deviation. Comminutions correspond to 18.4% (26/141) of the total, and 12.8% (19/148) have other facial fractures. There is no association between nasal fracture and risk of death for both sexes, but the males seem to show a higher tendency for nasal fracture earlier in life than the females. The differences of nasal fracture between sexes are in accordance with the historical data showing that men had more social and cultural opportunities to engage in violent encounters. Although the percentage in women is lower, the majority of laterally deviated noses and isolated, non-comminuted nasal fractures in both sexes show that interpersonal violence may have played an important role in the results.