Introduction:

According to the literature, the amount of osteons has been suggested as a good proxy to determine the age of death in adults. However in subadults research has not been carried out yet.

Objective:

To determine the accuracy of the histomorphometric technique predicting the age at death in subadults using bone remains.

Methodology:

The information of static histomorphometric parameters from about 120 iliac bones retrieved from the exhumed remains of subadults whose age at death was known was taken from the Granada collection. In order to predict the age at death we performed a step by step linear regression to estimate the fittest model.

Results:

The most closely and significantly associated biopsy findings with age were: the osteon count, the internal cortical width, and the trabecular bone volume. Pearson’s correlation index indicated a weak linear association among these variables. To assess the accuracy of the model we used a coefficient of determination with a 0.32 value. 32% of the age variation in the subadults was explained by the three variables.

Conclusion:

This regression model explains a percentage of the total age variation in the subadult population. However this model is not enough to determine the age at death.