ROME, ITALY—Live Science reports that bioarchaeologist Claudio Cavazzuti of the Museo delle Civiltà and his colleagues suggest it may be possible to determine the sex of an individual from burned bone fragments, based on a study of 124 burials and their grave goods held in the museum’s collections. The samples date to between the twelfth and sixth centuries B.C., a time when bodies in Europe were almost exclusively cremated, Cavazzuti said. The scientists measured various bone fragments in the burials, such as the width of the kneecap, the diameter of the head of the radius in the forearm, and the length of a tiny hand bone called the lunate. They then compared these measurements to artifacts in each burial thought to hint at the sex of the dead, such as weapons for men and weaving tools for women. Cavazzuti said the size of the bones in 21 of the 24 measurements taken predicted a sex for the individual that matched the gender suggested by the grave goods. The researchers plan to test their method on other sets of human remains. “It’s very important to reconstruct the ritual customs, but also the demographic structure of these societies,” Cavazzuti explained. To read about an instance in which analysis of bones called into question assumptions about whether bodies belonged to men or women, go to “Breaking Cahokia’s Glass Ceiling.”