The use of multiple foot bones to estimate sex in human archaeological and fossil populations

Abstract

Sex estimation is one of the main steps in the construction of the biological profile. When working with osseous human remains, this task could be impaired by a poor conservation state of the remains due to taphonomic processes, especially in fossil populations. Metric methodologies allow to estimate sex from different bones, which is why in recent decades studies that offer discriminant functions for different skeletal elements have become increasingly popular. Foot bones are generally well preserved due to their small size, and various foot bones have already demonstrated their capability to create these functions, with good results when applied to fossil remains.