Human occipital bone sexual dimorphism in an Archiac period archaeological population

PREPRINT NOTESThis paper was submitted for publication the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology in August of 2003. The paper was rejected roughly a year later due to scope and collection issues. I revisited the paper in 2007 with an eye to updating and resubmitting with additional data but the project was triaged from the publication pipeline due to the work involved relative to other projects more relevant to my research interests at the time. The current preprint paper contains updated references on occipital bone sexual dimorphism--all limited to the condylar region rather than the full suite of variation in the region.\n\nI am posting this to the preprint server to contribute the findings to the larger scientific community in the hopes that I might have time to revisit the paper as a student project. A more rigorous study would need to expand the sample either to a study collection that has remains with known sex (either verified via molecular sexing techniques or using a modern study collection) or additional comparative collections from hunter-gatherer populations. If a student is interested in taking up the topic and assuming lead authorship on a co-authored paper, Id be happy to collaborate and see this piece through the publication pipeline.\n\nABSTRACTThis paper presents the results of a comprehensive study of sexual dimorphism in the human occipital region of the skull using the remains of 39 prehistoric adults from the prehistoric Windover (6,000-8,000 BP). The results of a discriminant analysis classified 64% of the individuals correctly (using osteologically identified sex). Sexual dimorphism in this population may not be prevalent due to environmental stress.