Morphometry of the greater sciatic notch on remains of male byzantine skeletons from nicea

Abstract

It is well known that there are metric and no-nmetric variations in the expression of sexual dimorphism between racial phenotypes and populations. The creation of skeletal anthropometric measurements of different populations is useful for both comparisons with similar studies and for improving the identification of human skeletal remains. The features of the greater sciatic notch of the coxae are characteristic and are commonly used to determine sex in unknown individuals. In this study, several measurements of the greater sciatic notch, e.g. width (AB), depth (OC) and width of the posterior segment (OB) were taken and indices I and II were calculated in 26 adult male coxae of Byzantine skeletons (13th century) excavated at Nicea in Turkey. The results for the right and left greater sciatic notch were found to be AB: 46.00 mm (+/- 7.16) and 46.92 mm (+/- 5.93); OC: 25.23 mm (+/- 6.62) and 28.07 mm (+/- 4.78); OB: 20.30 mm (+/- 7.83) and 20.61 mm (+/- 5.25); Index I: 55.51 (+/- 15.83) and 61.02 (+/- 14.26); and Index II: 43.28 (+/- 11.35) and 44.67 (+/- 12.98), respectively. In conclusion, this study provides quantification of the features of the greater sciatic notch in the os coxae of late Byzantine period (13th century) skeletons that should be of value in forensic and archaeological analyses, especially when dealing with fragmentary remains.