A Recording Method for Sixteen Nonadult Muscle Entheses

ABSTRACT

Bioarchaeology lacks a system for recording the morphology of muscle and ligament attachment sites, called entheses, in growing individuals. Such information is useful in investigating factors that affect bone growth and development, including sex, age, puberty, pathology, and activity. This paper presents a standardized recording method for nonadult entheses based on 29 archaeological individuals of archivally known sex and age-at-death, ranging from two to 17 years. This paper (a) assesses the range of osseous changes of 16 entheses in the upper and lower limbs of growing individuals, and (b) presents a scoring method for each enthesis, which is evaluated through inter-and intra-observer comparisons. Nonadult entheses show a wide range of morphological variation. Method reproducibility is established. This method will allow researchers to further investigate factors affecting bone development in nonadult skeletal remains.

KEYWORDS:

• Entheseal change
• non-adult
• juveniles
• growth and development
• musculoskeletal
• activity markers

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank Dr. R. Schats and Dr. S. Schrader for testing the method and providing feedback, and Dr. M. L. P. Hoogland for archival data.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).