Paleodemography

Abstract

Paleodemography is the study of human population patterns in the past using skeletal samples excavated from archaeological sites. Paleodemographic reconstructions are crucial for understanding the causes and consequences of shifts in subsistence strategies, changes in environmental conditions, increased social complexity, colonial contact, and many other phenomena of interest to anthropologists. The skeletal samples and the data they provide are, however, imperfect representations of living populations. This entry summarizes the fundamental analytical and methodological issues associated with the field and the ways in which paleodemographers contend with them in order to make meaningful statements about life in the past from biased samples of the dead.