THE OSTEOLOGICAL PARADOX - PROBLEMS OF INFERRING PREHISTORIC HEALTH FROM SKELETAL SAMPLES

Paleodemography and paleopathology presuppose that direct relationships exist between statistics calculated from archaeological skeletal series (e.g., skeletal lesion frequencies and mean age at death) and the health status of the past populations that gave rise to the series. However, three fundamental conceptual problems confound the interpretation of such statistics: demographic non-stationarity, selective mortality, and unmeasured, individual-level heterogeneity in the risks of disease and death. Using simple models of the relationship between individual "frailty" and the hazard of death at each age, this paper explores the implications of these problems for archaeological interpretation. One conclusion is that the skeletal evidence pertaining to the transition from hunting-and-gathering to settled agriculture is equally consistent with an improvement in health and a deterioration in health resulting from the transition.