Children’s burials of the middle bronze age with cradle models: identification of the individual sex using the proteome analysis of teeth enamel

The paper reports on the sex identification results for four individuals from the children's group dating to the Middle Bronze Age buried in three kurgan burial grounds in the central Fore-Caucasus that contained ceramic models of cradles as funerary offerings (Fig. 1-4). In order to check the assumption that these individuals were females, we applied proteome analysis of teeth enamel that proved to be a reliable method which is simpler and more affordable than the genetic method of identifying sex of individuals. The sex of three individuals was explicitly identified as female. The sex of the fourth individual was identified as male, though some characteristics leave space for discussion regarding the rigor of this finding. Because of this fact and some identified deviations from the funerary rite, the authors think that this burial cannot yet provide evidence that a cradle model was found in a male child burial. The mass spectrometry data are available in the ProteomeXchange dataset using the PXD031737 identifier.