Assessing the reliability of paleodemographic fertility estimators using simulated skeletal distributions

✍ Scribed by Paine, Richard R.; Harpending, Henry C.

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 50 KB
• Volume: 101
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0002-9483
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1096-8644(199610)101:2<151::aid-ajpa3>3.0.co;2-5

✦ Synopsis

The reliability of published paleodemographic fertility reconstruction methods was assessed using simulated age-at-death distributions and a published cemetery series from a population with known birth rates. In the first test, the Brass ([1971] Biological Aspects of Demography, pp. 69-110) LOGIT models were used to generate 180 simulated skeletal samples of various sizes (N = 50,100,250) from hypothetical populations with known demographic rates. The base populations were expanding (r = 0.011, stationary, or declining (r = -0.01), yet all had the same life expectancy. Growth differences resulted from different fertility rates. The simulated skeletal series were then analyzed using the model life table fitting procedure outlined by Paine ([ 1989a]