Paleodemography: Age Distributions from Skeletal Samples

In this book, physical anthropologists, mathematical demographers, and statisticians tackle methodological issues for reconstructing demographic structure for skeletal samples. Topics discussed include how skeletal morphology is linked to chronological age, assessment of age from the skeleton, demographic models of mortality and their interpretation, and biostatistical approaches to age structure estimation from archaeological samples. This work will be of immense importance to anyone interested in paleodemography, including biological and physical anthropologists, demographers, geographers, evolutionary biologists, and statisticians.

ROBERT D. HOPPA is a physical anthropologist in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Manitoba. His research interests include historical demography, epidemiology, human skeletal biology, growth and development and forensic anthropology. He has also co-edited Human Growth in the Past: Studies from Bones and Teeth (1999; ISBN 0 521 63153 X).

JAMES W. VAUPEL is a demographer and is currently Director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany. He is also Professor of Demography and Epidemiology at the Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, and Senior Research Scientist at the Sanford Institute at Duke University in North Carolina. His research focuses on human biodemography, human longevity and centenarian research. He has authored or edited numerous books in the field of demography, particularly oldest old mortality, including Population Data at a Glance (1997), The Force of Mortality at Ages 80 to 120 (1998), and Validation of Exceptional Longevity (1999).