Elemental Analysis of Bone Tissue Using Electrothermal Vaporization Coupled to Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry

Sex determination of human remains is vital in the field of archaeology, as it provides researchers with a more complete understanding of social and biological structures within ancient societies.Typically, sex determination is performed through the analysis of skeletal features, such as the os coxae (pubic bone) or skull.In the absence of sufficiently preserved features, accurate sex determination can be exceedingly challenging.The multi-elemental analysis of hair, in combination with multi-variate statistics, has been shown to allow for accurate sex determination in both living humans and mummified individuals.However, hair is much rarer in an archeological context than bone tissue.Here, the method developed for hair is applied for the first time to bone tissue collected from 500-year-old mummies originating from Peru.Bone samples were ground prior to analysis via electrothermal vaporization coupled to inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry; only 2 mg of bone tissue is required for analysis.Point-by-point internal standardization was performed with Ar I 430.010 nm to compensate for sample loading effects on the plasma.Peak areas were integrated and mass corrected before being used in combination with multivariate analysis.Principal component analysis was insufficient to determine sex but was used to identify elements that are effective predictors of sex.Using linear discriminant analysis allowed accurate predictions for all samples.Possible correlations between elemental composition of hair and bone were also investigated.This study further expands the potential for accurate sex determination of human remains via non-morphological methods.