Osteological Age & Sex Estimation

Osteological age and sex estimation is the foundational bioarchaeological procedure for building a biological profile from human skeletal remains: estimating how old an individual was at death and determining their biological sex. The skeleton changes in patterned ways across life — teeth form and erupt, growth plates fuse, and joint surfaces and bone microstructure gradually degenerate — and these changes are scored against reference standards to bracket age, while sexually dimorphic features of the pelvis and skull indicate sex. The standardized recording protocols compiled by Jane Buikstra and Douglas Ubelaker provide the discipline's shared methodology, ensuring that age and sex estimates are comparable across analysts and collections. Because the relationship between skeletal change and chronological age is variable, the method emphasizes multiple indicators and explicit uncertainty.