MacConnachie Margaret, Lu Sarah, Wang Yangyang, Williams Jocelyn, Beauchemin Diane
Queen's University, Department of Chemistry 90 Bader Lane Kingston ON K7L 2S8 Canada
Trent University, Department of Anthropology 1600 West Bank Drive Peterborough ON K9L 0G2 Canada.
RSC Adv. 2022 Sep 22;12(42):27064-27071. doi: 10.1039/d2ra05654b.
Sex determination of human remains is of great archaeological significance, as it provides a more complete picture of social and familial structures within ancient societies. Typically performed through examination of bones in the pelvic region, accurate sex determination can be exceedingly challenging in the absence of a sufficiently preserved skeleton. Here, a method for sex determination in living humans, involving measurement of magnesium, strontium, sulfur, and zinc in head hair along with multivariate statistics, was applied for the first time to hair collected from 500 year-old mummies originating from Peru. Hair samples were washed in doubly deionized water, dried, and ground prior to analysis electrothermal vaporization coupled to inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry; only 2 mg of hair is required for analysis. Point-by-point internal standardization was performed with Ar i 430.010 nm to compensate for sample loading effects on the plasma. Peak areas were integrated and mass corrected before being used in combination with multivariate analysis. Although principal component analysis provided insufficient separation between the sexes, linear discriminant analysis (LDA) was highly effective for sex determination. Using mummy hair as the LDA model enabled accurate sex prediction of the mummies, showing that, despite the age of the hair, the samples still contain the necessary elemental information for sex determination. For accurate sex determination of mummies using hair collected from living humans, magnesium had to be replaced by sodium due to significant differences in dietary habits. With this simple modification, hair from living humans in North America could be used to successfully predict the sex of individuals who lived more than 500 years ago in Peru. This work paves the way for broader use of non-skeletal sex determination methods within the field of archaeology, filling a significant gap.
人类遗骸的性别鉴定具有重大的考古学意义，因为它能更完整地展现古代社会的社会和家庭结构。通常通过检查骨盆区域的骨骼来进行鉴定，然而在没有保存足够完好的骨骼的情况下，准确的性别鉴定可能极具挑战性。在此，一种用于活体人类性别鉴定的方法首次应用于从秘鲁出土的有500年历史的木乃伊的头发上，该方法涉及对头发生长过程中摄入的镁、锶、硫和锌进行测量并结合多变量统计分析。头发样本先用双去离子水清洗、干燥，然后研磨，再采用电热蒸发耦合电感耦合等离子体发射光谱法进行分析；每次分析仅需2毫克头发。采用氩原子430.010纳米谱线进行逐点内标校正，以补偿样品加载对等离子体的影响。在与多变量分析结合使用之前，先对峰面积进行积分和质量校正。尽管主成分分析在区分性别方面效果不佳，但线性判别分析（LDA）在性别鉴定方面非常有效。以木乃伊头发作为LDA模型能够准确预测木乃伊的性别，这表明尽管头发年代久远，但样本仍包含用于性别鉴定的必要元素信息。对于使用从活体人类采集的头发来准确鉴定木乃伊性别的情况，由于饮食习惯存在显著差异，必须用钠替代镁。通过这一简单调整，来自北美活体人类的头发可成功预测500多年前生活在秘鲁的个体的性别。这项工作为考古领域更广泛地使用非骨骼性别鉴定方法铺平了道路，填补了一个重大空白。
