If a population crashes in prehistory, and there is no paleodemographer there to hear it, does it make a sound?
Catastrophic episodes (e.g., epidemics, natural disasters) strike with only limited regard for age. A large percentage of catastrophic mortality in a population can lead to a death distribution that resembles the living distribution, which includes greater numbers of older children, adolescents, and young adults than typical mortality profiles. This paper examines both the population implications of a large catastrophic mortality event, based on the Black Death as it ravaged medieval Europe, and its long-term effects on age-at-death distributions. An increased prevalence of epidemic disease is a common feature of reconstructions of the shift to agriculture and the rise of urban centers. The model begins with a hypothetical Medieval living population. This population is stable and characterized by slow growth. It has fertility and mortality rates consistent with a natural-fertility, agrarian population. The effects of catastrophic episodes are simulated by projecting the model population and subjecting it to one large (30% mortality) catastrophic episode as part of a 100-year population projection. A pair of Leslie matrices forms the basis of the projection. The catastrophic episode has important, long-term effects on both the living population and the cumulative distribution of death. The living population fails to recover from plague losses; at the end of the projection, population is still less than 75% its pre-plague level. The age-at-death distribution takes on the juvenile-young adult-heavy profile characteristic of many archaeological samples. The cumulative death profile based on the projection differs from that produced by the stable model significantly (P < 0.05) for 25-50 years after the plague episode, depending on sample size.
Paine
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Department of Anthropology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84108, USA. paine@anthro.utah.edu
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000885:Anthropology, Physical; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004190:Disasters; D005260:Female; D005298:Fertility; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008017:Life Expectancy; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009026:Mortality; D010930:Plague / Q000401:mortality; D011157:Population Dynamics; D012424:Rural Population; D014505:Urban Population