Children of the Gilded Age: Juvenile Age Estimation and Fertility Approximation for the Bethel Cemetery

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Bethel Cemetery Relocation Project: Historical, Osteological, and Material Culture Analyses of a Nineteenth-Century Indiana Cemetery" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Bioarchaeological analyses of the Bethel Cemetery have provided a unique opportunity to understand population dynamics in central Indiana during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With over 40% of exhumed individuals classified as juveniles, the cemetery can be characterized as being derived from a once-living population with high fertility rates. However, making inferences about fertility and growth requires careful consideration of skeletal samples’ inherent biases and potential methodological shortcomings. In particular, the methods selected to estimate age-at-death for juveniles can have significant impacts on subsequent proportional measures of fertility and childhood survivorship, resulting in disparate reconstructions of demographic patterns. Our study examines two widely utilized methods for estimating age-at-death via tooth crown and root development. We employ both methods and then compare how each affects the proportional measures used by archaeologists to estimate fertility and childhood survivorship. The dental age estimation methods resulted in two significantly different survivorship curves and had a variable impact on the proportional measures of fertility. Our results indicate that researchers need to be cognizant of the structure of their skeletal sample, make informed decisions regarding age estimation techniques, and consider the applicability of differing fertility estimation techniques when attempting to reconstruct past population dynamics.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)   •
• The Bethel Cemetery Relocation Project: Historical, Osteological, and Material Culture Analyses of a Nineteenth-Century Indiana Cemetery

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37716.0