Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER
11
Demography
Lyle W. Konigsberg, Susan R. Frankenberg
INTRODUCTION
In the past, the term “demography” as applied in skeletal biology was synonymous with
the production of life tables (
Jackes, 1992
). A life table is simply a tabulation of the number of
deaths within various age intervals, which is then used to calculate such related measures as
the life expectancy for individuals who enter an age interval, the probability that someone
who enters the age interval will die within that interval, or the living age distribution (pop-
ulation pyramid) implied by the distribution of deaths across age intervals. This life table
approach allowed a division of labor where an osteologist could produce the counts of
the number of deaths within age intervals after determining the age-at-death for each skel-
eton and a demographer could construct the life table. Oftentimes the osteologist or skeletal
biologist would do it all, but even in this case there was a very clear order of operations
where estimation of ages preceded the demographic analysis. The chapter structure of
this topic follows such an order, with the chapter on age estimation among the first in the
“Research on Aspects of the Biological Profile” part, and this chapter on demography being
the last.
We use the term “demography”
1
as a more specific version of its literal meaning derived
from the Greek words “demos” (meaning “people”) and “graphia” (meaning “description
of”). So to us, the term “demography” means a description of people, and more specifically
a description of their ages and sexes. To be meaningful, this description must move beyond
the level of individual people. As we are often working with prehistoric populations, the
description also must generally encompass far broader periods of time than would be typical
in demographic studies of extant populations.
By the end of the previous millennium, the methods for demographic analyses of skeletal
samples and the understanding of paleodemography had begun to shift substantially. This
shift was triggered by
Bocquet-Appel's and Masset's
Farewell to Paleodemography (1982),
and their work together with that of other researchers (
Konigsberg and Frankenberg, 1992,
1
All bolded terms are defined in the glossary at the end of this volume.
