Sex determination by sternal measurements on a contemporary southern italian population

Measurements of seven sternal parameters (total height, manubrium height, corpus height, max manubrium width, max. corpus width, thickness of manubrium, jugular incisure width), obtained from a known contemporary Southern Italian skeletal population, were taken to obtain sex determination by discriminant function. In the univariate analysis the totalheight shows the best discriminant attitude with a percentage of misclassification of 12.50%. The multivariate analysis needs four parameters (manubrium height, corpus height, max. manubrium length, max. corpus length) to obtaine the highest value of correct sex determination with a rate of 95%.