Hyperostosis frontalis interna: a new perspective in burned individuals ’ analysis for determining age and sex from archaeo‐anthropological and medico‐legal contexts.

The objective of this study is to demonstrate the benefit of HFI diagnosis for identifying individuals (estimating their age and determining their sex) in the archaeo-anthropological analysis of ancient cremation burial sites, and in medico-legal investigations on burned human remains. Our sample consisted of 82 cremated individuals from the Roman Porta Nocera Necropolis in Pompeii (1st century BC - 1st century AD). After excluding juveniles under 15 years of age, as HFI primarily affects adult individuals, our sample was reduced to 71 individuals, and the prevalence of hyperostosis frontalis interna was 15.5% (n=11). A statistically significant difference is observed between women and men, and no individuals previously identified as male displayed HFI. Furthermore, 90.9 % of the individuals displayed degenerative conditions in conjunction with HFI, showing a highly significant correlation of this lesion with signs of ageing (Chi-square 9.365; p=0.01). Finally, this disorder boosted diagnostic performance in respect of determining sex, increasing the number of biologically sexed individuals from 46.5% to 53.5%. Therefore, we propose that hyperostosis frontalis diagnosis offers genuine added value in the identification of burned human remains.
Source: International Journal of Osteoarchaeology - Category: Science Authors: Tags: RESEARCH ARTICLE Source Type: research