Great expectations: The rise, fall, and resurrection of adult skeletal age estimation

Milner, George R.; Boldsen, Jesper L.; Ousley, Stephen D.; Getz, Sara M.; Weise, Svenja; Tarp, Peter

doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-824370-1.00011-0

Cited by 9 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…The direction paleodemographers must go is clear, although the precise path to be followed, with all its twists and turns, is not. For more accurate information on age‐at‐death, better skeletal traits and ways to handle them are needed, with that work already underway (e.g., Milner et al, 2021). Better estimates by themselves, however, do not tell us about the experiences of past people.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Both issues are being addressed simultaneously in an ongoing research effort based on over 1700 skeletons from collections on four continents (Milner et al, 2021). The research initiative was inspired by the success of subjectively assessing age from the general appearance of skeletons.…”

Section: A New Approach To Estimate Adult Agementioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is not known how long the oldest people might have lived in the kinds of societies bioarchaeologists study. Fortunately, the ongoing development of TA3 based on a wide array of skeletal characteristics permits estimates for the elderly whose ages approach 100 years (Figure 5; Milner et al, 2021). Reliably going beyond that point is a problem because people of such advanced age are exceedingly rare in the modern skeletal collections that form the basis of age-estimation methods.…”

Section: The Oldest Oldmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nevertheless, an early announcement of the field's death was surely premature, but in Bocquet‐Appel and Masset's (1982) Farewell to Paleodemography the research effort suffered a direct, telling, and much‐deserved hit. Four decades on, their challenge coupled with issues raised by other researchers continues to inspire the conceptual and methodological work necessary to estimate age from skeletal remains, generate age‐at‐death distributions, and glean information from them about life in the past (Frankenberg & Konigsberg, 2006; Hoppa & Vaupel, 2002a; Milner et al, 2019, 2021; Séguy & Buchet, 2013).…”

Section: Paleodemographymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Paleodemography: From archaeology and skeletal age estimation to life in the past

Boldsen

Milner

Ousley

2021

American Journal of Biological Anthropology

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Much of paleodemography, an interdisciplinary field with strong ties to archaeology, among other disciplines, is oriented toward clarifying the life experiences of past people and why they changed over time. We focus on how human skeletons contribute to our understanding of preindustrial demographic regimes, including when changes took place that led to the world as we know it today. Problems with existing paleodemographic practices are highlighted, as are promising directions for future work. The latter requires both better age estimates and innovative methods to handle data appropriately. Age‐at‐death estimates for adult skeletons are a particular problem, especially for adults over 50 years that undoubtedly are mistakenly underrepresented in published studies of archaeological skeletons. Better age estimates for the entirety of the lifespan are essential to generate realistic distributions of age at death. There are currently encouraging signs that after about a half‐century of intensive, and sometimes contentious, research, paleodemography is poised to contribute much to understandings of evolutionary processes, the structure of past populations, and human‐disease interaction, among other topics.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A New Approach To Estimate Adult Agementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Oldest Oldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Paleodemographymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Paleodemography: From archaeology and skeletal age estimation to life in the past

Boldsen

Milner

Ousley

2021

American Journal of Biological Anthropology

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“…The use of age-structured data, of course, hinges on accurate age-at-death estimates. Emerging approaches for improved age estimation include the third version of transition analysis (Milner et al, 2021), which includes dozens of skeletal indicators, most of which are infracranial, and can be applied to incomplete and fragmentary remains. This version might better allow people working with fragmentary and otherwise poorly preserved skeletal remains to link age (on an individual basis) to other variables of interest.…”

Section: Moreymentioning

confidence: 99%

Twenty‐first century bioarchaeology: Taking stock and moving forward

Buikstra

DeWitte

Baker

et al. 2022

American Journal of Biological Anthropology

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This article presents outcomes from a Workshop entitled “Bioarchaeology: Taking Stock and Moving Forward,” which was held at Arizona State University (ASU) on March 6–8, 2020. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the School of Human Evolution and Social Change (ASU), and the Center for Bioarchaeological Research (CBR, ASU), the Workshop's overall goal was to explore reasons why research proposals submitted by bioarchaeologists, both graduate students and established scholars, fared disproportionately poorly within recent NSF Anthropology Program competitions and to offer advice for increasing success. Therefore, this Workshop comprised 43 international scholars and four advanced graduate students with a history of successful grant acquisition, primarily from the United States. Ultimately, we focused on two related aims: (1) best practices for improving research designs and training and (2) evaluating topics of contemporary significance that reverberate through history and beyond as promising trajectories for bioarchaeological research. Among the former were contextual grounding, research question/hypothesis generation, statistical procedures appropriate for small samples and mixed qualitative/quantitative data, the salience of Bayesian methods, and training program content. Topical foci included ethics, social inequality, identity (including intersectionality), climate change, migration, violence, epidemic disease, adaptability/plasticity, the osteological paradox, and the developmental origins of health and disease. Given the profound changes required globally to address decolonization in the 21st century, this concern also entered many formal and informal discussions.

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