2008_2 - Archeologický ústav AV ČR

Archeologické rozhledy LX–2008 343Storey, R. 2007: An elusive paleodemography? A comparison of two methods for estimating the adult agedistribution of deaths at Late Classic Copan, Honduras. American Journal of Physical Anthropology132, 40–47.Suchey, J. M. 1979: Problems in the aging of females using the os pubis. American Journal of PhysicalAnthropology 51, 467–470.Sullivan, A. 2004: Reconstructing relationships among mortality, status and gender at the medieval GilbertinePriory of St. Andrew, Fishergate, York. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 124, 330–345.Šlaus, M. – Pećina-Šlaus, N. – Brkić, H. 2004: Life stress on the Roman limes in continental Croatia. Homo 54,240–263Wood, J. W. – Milner, G. R. – Harpending, H. C. – Weiss, K. M. 1992: The osteological paradox. Problems ofinferring prehistoric health from skeletal samples. Current Anthropology 33, 343–370.Wright, L. E. – Yoder, C. J. 2003: Recent progress in bioarchaeology: approaches to the osteological paradox.Journal of Archaeological Research 11, 43–70.Živný, M. 2003: Demografie moravských pohřebišť z mladší doby hradištní (950–1250). In: V. Hašek –R. Nekuda – J. Unger edd., Ve službách archeologie IV. Sborník k 75. narozeninám prof. PhDr. VladimíraNekudy, DrSc., Muzejní a vlastivědná společnost v Brně – Geodrill – Archeologický ústav SAV,Brno, 294–302.Contemporary Czech paleodemography:False hope, excessive optimism, and feasible new objectOver the last few years, some Czech and foreign studies, mostly written by young anthropologists,have dealt with paleodemographic analysis of burial sites (for example: Živný 2003; Drozdová 2005;Hrnčířová – Jarošová 2005; 2007; Jarošová – Hrnčířová 2005). Through the analysis of skeletalassemblages provided by burial sites, those papers are focused on the assessment of individual sexand age, and also on the estimation of a number of demographic indicators. The results are presentedin the form of life tables, without any discussion about the value and the reliability of the input andoutput data. The probabilities of death according to age and sex produced in those tables are the basisfor the authors to deduce the living conditions of past populations. 10-years intervals are used forthe estimation of age at death though we actually know since a long time that no method at all can givesuch an accuracy with a good reliability (for example: Jackes 2000; Chamberlain 2000). The choiceof such 10-years categories is alleged to be needed for the sake of the comparison between thosestudies and older ones, although it would have been more appropriate to question the old paleodemographicdata. Disregarding the developments of biological anthropology and paleodemography overthe last decades is a way of clinging to the distorted view of the demography of past populations thatis sometimes fixed in the mind of the general audience (life expectancy at birth around 20 years, withdeviations from 15 to 25, lack of elderly people, short life span, high mortality for women, etc.), in spiteof the fact that it is due to biased methods dating from the pioneering period of paleodemography.A demographic analysis solely based on life tables calculated from skeletal data has lately been comparedby Sellier (2007) to Lewis Carroll’s Hunting of the Snark (1876): You never catch the Snark(the actual demographic profile of a past population) but you could eventually find something else(for the Snark was a Boojum, you see), like the archaeological significance of the skeletal sample.The uncritical use of paleodemographic calculations as if they were the actual demographic dataof archaeological populations has been questioned since the early 1980’s (for example: Petersen 1975;Howell 1982) but the pessimistic conclusions about the impossibility to draw paleodemographic estimatesfrom skeletons were eventually put aside (Bocquet-Appel – Masset 1982; Buikstra – Konigsberg 1985;Piontek – Weber 1990). A milestone in the paleodemographic thought which should be read by anyonedealing with burial sites is „The Osteological Paradox“ (Wood et al. 1992). The authors show thatfair living conditions could be wrongly attributed to populations subject to effective environmentalpressure and stress because individuals would die young, that is early enough not to have time to getstress markers on their skeleton, whereas individuals under better conditions will live much older and