Investigating population specific methods for Latin Americans : sex estimation using the calcaneus in Chilean and Mexican populations

Abstract

Latin American populations are often grouped together as one ancestry. Therefore, this research investigated population specificity for sex estimation using the calcaneus of contemporary adult Chilean and Mexican populations. The calcaneus was chosen as it is a bone with high resistance to taphonomic change. Ten variables were measured on Chilean (64 males and 66 females) and Mexican (92 males and 63 females) calcanei. After testing the two populations, no significant differences were found between the Chilean and Mexican samples so they were combined as the ‘Combined CM’ population to develop the discriminant functions for sex estimation. Sex estimation classification accuracy rates ranged from 70.5% (univariate) to 86.3% (multivariate). The ‘Combined CM’ population was compared to other populations and, overall, showed that significant differences existed between populations. This has been attributed to stature, nutrition, psychological stress, and research design.