Resumo

MAZZA, Bárbara. A statistical approach to entheseal changes analyses to infer sexual differences in human remains . Rev. Mus. Antropol. [online]. 2017, vol.10, n.2, pp.145-156. ISSN 1852-060X.

Abstract Entheseal changes have been analyzed through several statistical approaches. This methodological variability hinders cross-comparisons. The aim of this work is to present and discuss the results of a statistical set of analyses commonly applied in the study of sexual differences in entheseal changes with the final objective of suggesting the most effective method. For this purpose, it was applied the following statistical tests: frequency distribution, arithmetic mean and standard deviation, Chi-square test, Mann-Whitney U test, t-Student, Spearman simple and partial correlations and generalized linear models. The sample investigated was composed by 40 adult individuals of both sexes from hunter-gatherer populations from lower Paraná wetlands. Most statistical tests showed significant differences between both sexes. However, since entheseal changes have a multifactorial etiology, it is recommended to apply statistical tests that control the effect of some variables, such as partial correlations and generalized linear models.

Palavras-chave : Bivariate analysis; Partial correlations; Generalized linear models; Entheses; Sexual differences.

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