2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
Bioarchaeological study of life history patterns of ancient human skeletons from the perspectives of subadults
| Project/Area Number |
23770284
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
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| Allocation Type | Multi-year Fund |
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| Research Field |
Physical anthropology
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| Research Institution | St. Marianna University School of Medicine |
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Principal Investigator |
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| Project Period (FY) |
2011-04-28 – 2015-03-31
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| Keywords | ライフヒストリー |
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| Outline of Final Research Achievements |
The purposes of this study are to examine non-adult skeletons from the Sakai-kango-toshi 871 (SKT 871) site in Edo-period (AD 17-19th centuries) Japan, to estimate their age-at-death distribution, and to discuss whether paleodemographic estimates can yield appropriate mortality patterns of them. The use of the Bayesian method for fetal age estimation, assuming uniform priors, yielded a peak of deaths at 10 months of gestation. The age-at-death distribution obtained from the whole population further indicated the peak of deaths being at the fetal stage and the number of deaths decreasing with age. The concentration on full-term of gestation implied deaths related to birth, which is consistent with natural mortality. Another important finding of this study is that individuals aged less than 7 years accounted for about 98% of the deaths and there was no burial for adults.
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| Free Research Field |
生物考古学
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