Determination of Sex from the Clavicle and Scapula in a Guatemalan Contemporary Rural Indigenous Population

Abstract

The clavicle has been described as a useful bone for the metric determination of sex of human skeletal remains in a contemporary, predominantly white, North American forensic sample. In this article, measurements of clavicle and scapula are provided for a contemporary Guatemalan rural indigenous sample of forensic origin. Maximum length and circumference at midshaft of the clavicle, and height and width of the glenoid fossa of the scapula, were measured in 35 female and 62 male clavicles, and in 38 female and 65 male scapulae. Discriminant function analysis was used to study sexual dimorphism in this population with a classification purpose. Leave-one-out method (jackknife) matrices produced classification success rates ranging from 85.6% to 94.8%. A comparison with the North American forensic sample showed low percentages of correctly sexed Guatemalan male clavicles, ranging from 29.4% to 54.9%. The choice of an appropriate standard for the metric determination of sex is a crucial step in forensic anthropology.

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