Krause Swantje, Lemke Arne-Jörn
Charité, Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Current address: Postfach 347009, 28339 Bremen, Germany.
Anthropol Anz. 2020 Dec 28. doi: 10.1127/anthranz/2020/1263.
Studies of cremated skeletal remains show that the petrous part of the temporal bone often survives the burning process due to its dense and robust structure. Because of its frequent occurrence and well preservation in skeletal material from archaeological and forensic context, it has repeatedly been investigated for patterns of sexual dimorphism and potential to estimate sex from skeletal remains. Although being a relatively small skeletal element, the posterior part of the petrous bone has several anatomical features that serve as characteristic landmarks for the application of metric studies. Furthermore, sex-specific differences have also been recognised for the dimensions of the medial and lateral angle of the Internal acoustic canal (IAC). However, the accuracy of estimating an individual's sex based on measurements of the petrous bone has met with varying degrees of success. The purpose of this study was to see how well certain variables were identified and measured, but also to recognise the reproducibility of the results. In an initial approach five variables were selected and measured on ten petrous bones from an archaeological context. In addition, a total of forty casts were prepared in order to measure the angular dimensions. It was found that the basic measurements of all variables show high variations, but in only one variable, measurements were very inconsistent as evidenced by the large intra- and inter-observer errors. In terms of the angle dimension the results show that the range of variation was higher for the lateral angle and that the intra-observer error was found to be much lower for the medial angle than for the lateral one. The results show potential in the use of these methods in terms of repeatability, but also indicate that the metric assessment is prone to false application caused by the morphological variations of the individual landmarks.
对火化后的骨骼遗骸的研究表明，颞骨的岩部由于其致密且坚固的结构，在燃烧过程中常常能够留存下来。由于它在考古和法医背景下的骨骼材料中频繁出现且保存完好，因此人们多次对其进行研究，以探寻性别二态性模式以及从骨骼遗骸估计性别的潜力。尽管岩骨后部是一个相对较小的骨骼元素，但它具有若干解剖特征，可作为计量研究应用的特征性标志。此外，内耳道（IAC）内侧角和外侧角的尺寸也存在性别特异性差异。然而，基于岩骨测量来估计个体性别的准确性取得了不同程度的成功。本研究的目的不仅是观察某些变量的识别和测量效果如何，还在于认识结果的可重复性。在初步研究中，从考古背景下的十块岩骨中选取并测量了五个变量。此外，总共制作了四十个模型以测量角度尺寸。结果发现，所有变量的基本测量值都显示出高度的变异性，但只有一个变量的测量非常不一致，观察者内部和观察者之间的误差很大就证明了这一点。就角度尺寸而言，结果表明外侧角的变异范围更大，并且发现观察者内部误差在内侧角比外侧角要低得多。结果显示了这些方法在可重复性方面的潜力，但也表明计量评估容易因各个标志的形态变异而导致错误应用。
