Sex determination of Joseon people skeletons based on anatomical, cultural and molecular biological clues

Sex determination is very integral to examinations conducted by anatomists on human skeletons discovered in the archaeological field. In Korea, as in other countries, cultural or anatomical information has been the tool of first resort in making such determinations. In cases in which anatomical examination has revealed only borderline characteristics, PCR-based analysis of X/Y-chromosome genes has been employed. Even so, there are as yet very few reports on how accurately the respective results correspond with each other. In this study on 34 examined medieval Korean skeletons, 11 (32.3%) showed perfectly matching results for the three methods of sex determination. In the cases in which the cultural and anatomical findings were discordant, the amelogenin assay corroborated either the former or the latter. Although we must admit the relatively limited role of aDNA analysis, when only very small amounts of amplifiable DNA remain, we believe that the amelogenin assay can be very meaningful to Korean anatomists when employed in adjunct to conventional anatomically or culturally based sex determination.