Church, Elizabeth;
(2024)
A (True) Alternative Approach to Osteological Sex Estimation.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
In the last decade, there has been a deep level of advocating for bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology researchers to adhere to anti-racist, normative ethical standards in research using, curating, and method application to human skeletal remains. Popular methods are popular because they are easy to apply and reflect basic morphology, despite established, historical, racial and misogynistic perspectives to method development. Virtual anthropological methods, using 3D models derived from light-scanning or CT-data, are also becoming increasingly popular, without often considering the second set of ethical considerations for data survivorship, and the potential of the digital data commons. This research presents a digital information systems (DIS) approach to sex estimation. This method is based on the principles of open-source software, a spectrum-based interpretation of sex expression, and data preservation. A baseline study was conducted following Harrison (2019) and Rennie (2018), utilising 348 adult os coxae from St. Bride’s, Fleet Street, Simon Identified Skeletal Collection, Christ Church Spitalfields, and the Luís Lopes Collection. Based on morphological scoring, both workflows resulted in female and male positive predictive values (PPV) over 0.9. A DIS-mesh value comparison workflow captured os coxae photosets, rendering 227 models. An averaged model was created using hyper-scored os coxae and evaluated using CloudCompare. The resulting ranking method assigns a value which is the difference between the male and female shape for each os coxae. The global population compared to the averaged model resulted in female and male PPV of 0.93 and 0.89, while a hold-out sample from the St Bride's Fleet Street population yielded a male PPV of .90 and a female PPV of 1.0. These results show how promising digital data can be; this new medium can produce innovative biological profile estimation methods. It can do so while adhering to normative ethics and curating digital survivorship for future research.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | A (True) Alternative Approach to Osteological Sex Estimation |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2022. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Institute of Archaeology |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10191400 |
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