Hiérarchie et fiabilité des liaisons ostéologiques (par symétrie et par contiguïté articulaire) dans l’étude des sépultures anciennes (Paperback)

This is an experimental study of refitting individual bones by osteoscopic analysis. This included examining 20 bilaterally symmetrical pairs and 14 contiguous articulations. More than 800 tests, each one based upon 70 bones, were carried out, establishing the occurrence of three hierarchies. The first hierarchy involves the type of refitting (bilaterally symmetrical bones are much more easily recognised than the contiguity articulations); the second demonstrates that the accuracy of recognising refitted bones depends on the type of bones involved; and the last relates to the degree of knowledge that can be determined from the osteology. These results will provide a strategy to follow during future digging excavations when referencing topographic data. The accuracy of studies applied to metrical, morphometrical and chromatic approaches is also evaluated. The implications brought by refitting single bones in the counting of individuals buried are analysed, and new formulae are proposed that allow us to estimate errors in the refitting of individual bones.