Comparing Demographic Patterns of Archaeological and Modern Cemetery Data: A Novel Application of GPS Technology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Bioarchaeologists routinely generate demographic estimates of past populations from archaeological contexts across time and geography. Despite numerous ways that bioarchaeological data enhance demographic reconstructions of past populations, few contexts allow direct comparison between archaeological and modern demography of the same locale. This project presents a comparison of demographic data drawn from a Transylvanian archaeological cemetery and a modern cemetery directly adjacent to the archaeological site. The Papdomb site represents a medieval Szekler village church and churchyard that was in use for approximately 800 years. A modern cemetery utilized by the same village was established in the nineteenth century and is contiguous to the medieval cemetery. During our 2023 field season, the location of all visible tombstones was mapped using a cell phone and a GPS application. All observable names, birthdates, and death dates were recorded (n = 319 graves containing 522 individuals). Demographic patterns drawn from the tombstone data were compared to the site’s bioarchaeological demography and several differences were observed, namely fewer nonadults and more older adults are present in the modern tombstone dataset. This novel use of GPS data demonstrates potential differences in demographic patterns across time and calls attention to the limits of age estimation in bioarchaeology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40412.0