Utility of the Sex Assessment Method, DSP, on a Nubian Skeletal Sample
Abstract
In this study, the validity of a new method for sex determination, Diagnose Sexuelle Probabiliste (DSP), was tested using ten coxal measurements obtained from 43 ancient Nubian individuals. Using statistical analyses, differences in means between females and males and the discriminant power of each metric variable were tested. The inter-observer agreement between the sex determinations by the author and the DSP2 program was also tested. The sex of 34 individuals was determined using the DSP2 program with a sexing accuracy of 100% according to the sex estimation of the author. Metric variables with significant difference in means between sexes displayed sexing accuracies between 89,7-97,1%, while, metric variables with no significant difference in means between sexes displayed sexing accuracies between 72,2-78,3%. The inter-observer agreement between the results of the author and the DSP2 program were of very good strength. Conclusively, the DSP method is highly recommended to be used in the sex estimation of skeletal remains and is assessed to be an accurate method to be used on ancient Nubian skeletal material as well.
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