Contextualizing bilateral asymmetry and gender: A multivariate approach to femoral cross-sectional geometry at rural Medieval Pieve di Pava, Italy.

Our results suggest that males and females had varied experiences of labor and work during their lives that did not reflect the strict binary gender roles sometimes documented for medieval Europe. One important axis of difference is the direction and magnitude of bilateral asymmetry observed in our femur sample, which is associated with divergent trends in section moduli and bone area measures.