Estimating the age-of-death is very important in both bioarchaeological and forensic studies. The estimation of the age-at-death can contribute identifying an individual, but it can also be...Show moreEstimating the age-of-death is very important in both bioarchaeological and forensic studies. The estimation of the age-at-death can contribute identifying an individual, but it can also be interesting to understand the aging pattern and sexual dimorphism when it comes to the morphological changes in, for example, the vertebral elements. There are methods to estimate this age-at-death of an individual, using different bones. These traditional methods are cranial suture closure, dental wear, sternal rib end, pubic symphysis, and auricular surface. It can be extremely interesting to investigate whether this age-at-death estimation can be made in other ways because it can contribute to identifying an individual, but also to obtaining this age-at-death estimation more accurately. This is the reason why it was investigated for this study whether it is possible to accurately estimate this age-at-death using the osteophytes, or bone outgrowths, on the vertebral column. A 19th-century European collection from the Middenbeemster cemetery, where the age data is known, was used for this. A total of 90 individuals, of which 40 males and 50 females, were scored for the degree of osteophyte formation on the vertebral column, using three different scoring models. An age-at-death estimation was obtained for 20% of the total amount of individuals. This age-at-death estimation was obtained by first developing population-specific regression equations for all three methods tested in this study. This was done by performing linear regressions with cross-validation, using 80% of the total dataset to develop population-specific regression equations and the other 20% was used to estimate the age-at-death. In addition, the age-at-death of these 18 individuals was also estimated using regression equations developed from a Thai population and therefore not population-specific for this study. Based on this research, it can be concluded that it is possible to make an age-at-death estimation using the osteophyte formation on the vertebral column. Since there is a high correlation between the age-at-death and the vertebral osteophyte formation, this method can be used to make an age-at-death estimation, but a combination of age-at-death estimation methods will provide a more accurate result. The use of population-specific regression equations yields more accurate age-at-death results and it is therefore recommended to use population-specific equations when estimating an individual's age-at-death. The population-specific regression equations developed in this study can be used for this.Show less
