Evaluation of Three-Dimensional Tomography of Interorbital, Biorbital and Bizigomatic Distances in Zeytinli Island (2nd century AD 12th century BC) Individuals

Abstract

Zeytinli Island, which is connected to Balıkesir province Erdek county, is one of the important archaeological excavation sites in our country. The anthropological evaluations of human skeletons obtained from Zeytinli island excavations gave important information about age and gender especially when the skull was taken into account and especially the use of radiological examinations increased the reliability of this information. In particular, theuse of radiological examination sincreas esther reliability of this information. Our study was carried out between 2007 and 2011 by taking the skulls of a total of 22 individuals, 6 females and 16 males between the 2nd century BC and the 12th century AD, uncovered as a result of the excavations performed in Zeytinli Island. The image staken by multislice computed tomography were transformedin to three-dimensional form with workstation software, and their interorbital, biorbital and bizygomatic measurements were performed. The skull measurement values were presented as median (range) with a whisker graphic. The median female and male values were comparedusing the Mann-Whitney test. The Pearson correlation test was used to examine the correlations between the measurement values. The fact that the p-value was below 0.05 was considered significant. Upon evaluating the data, the difference between the male and female interorbital and bizygomatic distances was not found significant (p>0,05). When the biorbital distances were taken into account, the biorbital distances of male skulls were found to be significantly higher compared to those of female skulls (p<0,05) . No significant relationship was found when the analyses of the correlation between interorbital and biorbitaland bizygomatic distances were examined. In our study, the bizigotic distances in the skulls belonging to male individuals are longer than the skulls of female individuals. This shows that the lateral protrusions of the male's skull are more prominent. This is an important criterion for gender discrimination.