Your Custom Text Here
In this lesson for high school life sciences, students explore case studies of human remains that have challenged scientists’ ideas about how gender and sex operated in ancient times to help us better understand how gender, sex, and sexuality change our bodies and our stories in the present day.
Lewis Steller created this lesson as part of the Science Friday Educator Collaborative.
Analysis of ancient DNA found in Finland has unveiled a surprise a century later – the remains of an early medieval warrior thought to be female may have been nonbinary. Xcaret Nuñez reports for NPR.
The data indicate that the person had a feminine presentation, likely XXY chromosomes, and a penis. The way they were buried led to the conclusion that the remains were of "a respected person whose gender identity may well have been non-binary."
To use this article with students, pre-teach the difference between gender and sex because this is not well-defined in the article.
The most accurate single indicator was sacrum shape (94.1%). On the other hand, three combinations of pelvic criteria produced higher levels of accuracy than the trait list as a whole: obturator foramen shape and presence of the ventral arc (98%); obturator foramen shape and presence of the ventral arc (98%); obturator foramen shape and true pelvis shape (98%); pubic shape and acetabulum shape and size (95%).
The William Bass Field Manual mentions other studies of European populations, but reproduces in full several tables by Rogers and Saunders based on 49 “adult skeletons from a 19th-century cemetery located on the grounds of the St Thomas Anglican Church in Belleville, Canada.”
Embedded below are tables for:
Table 3-24. Accuracy Levels for Each Individual Pelvic Trait (after Rogers & Saunders (1994:1051, Table 5) (Bass 2005: 216)
Table 3-25. Probability of Estimating Sex Correctly for Combinations of Two Traits (after Rogers & Saunders (1994:1051, Table 3) (Bass 2005: 216)
Curious about what the broad labels for male and female anatomical regions are for those anthropologists using the Bass Manual?
Source
Bass, William. 2005. Human Osteology: A Laboratory and Field Manual, 5th ed. Special Publication No. 2 of the Missouri Archaeological Society. Columbia, MO. http://coas.missouri.edu/mas