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A Test of Paleodemographic Models

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Roberta L. Hall
Roberta L. Hall*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331.
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Abstract

Paleodemography is a useful adjunct to archaeological reconstruction, but as a research tool it is relatively new and requires further study. This paper reports on a project in which the life-table method of modeling demographic processes, based on a sexed and aged sample from the community ossuary, was tested against census records of the population structure. Data were taken from cemetery headstones in a township in central Indiana, spanning the period from its first settlement by Euroamerican farmers in 1830 through 1972. Life-expectancy estimates produced from the life tables were essentially identical to those produced from federal census data. Paleodemographic models of population structure were statistically different from census tabulations but were similar in form, representing a "smoothed" estimate of age structure.

Type
Reports
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , October 1978 , pp. 715 - 729
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1978

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References

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