Prédiction du sexe à partir d'un échantillon de métacarpes de chèvres (Capra hircus L., 1758) de race Arabia (Algérie) : réalisation d'un référentiel pour l'archéozoologie

Sex prediction from a sample of goat metacarpal bones (Capra hircus, L. 1758) of Arabia breed (Algeria) : realization of a reference database for zooarchaeological studies.- Sex prediction from bones coming from archaeological sites require tools of comparison and reference collections which are the closest possible to the studied morphological types. The local Algerian goat (Arabia) is, from this point of view, an old population of small to medium size animals which perfectly caters to the expectations of the zooarchaeologists. The analysis of sexual dimorphism in the caprine species is the subject of very few studies. We thus suggest going farther into the matter by using a sample of 62 left metacarpal bones from the Arabia goat breed. For each animal, the carcass weight, the age and the sex were recorded. Once boiled, each bone was measured (7 linear measurements) and the indices of slenderness of the proximal end and of the shaft were calculated. Sexual dimorphism is well marked and osteometry of the metacarpal bones allows finding the gender of the sample without much trouble. The fact that young individuals are present in the sample makes the analysis more complicated, but it also makes it more accurate to what zooarchaeologists encounter in the field. A logistic regression allows us to make a prediction of the sex from the realized linear measures.