Assessing the reliability of paleodemographic fertility estimators using simulated skeletal distributions

The reliability of published paleodemographic fertility reconstruction methods was assessed using simulated age-at-death distributions and a published cemetery series from a population with known birth rates. In the first test, the Brass ([1971] Biological Aspects of Demography, pp. 69-110) LOGIT models were used to generate 180 simulated skeletal samples of various sizes (N = 50, 100, 250) from hypothetical populations with known demographic rates. The base populations were expanding (r = 0.01), stationary, or declining (r = -0.01), yet all had the same life expectancy. Growth differences resulted from different fertility rates. The simulated skeletal series were then analyzed using the model life table fitting procedure outlined by Paine ([1989a] Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 79:51-62), three commonly employed age ratio tests (Bocquet-Appel and Masset [1892] J. Hum. Evol. 11:321-333; Buikstra et al. [1986] Am. Antiquity 51:528-546), and one age-at-death ratio not previously published. In the second test the model life table fitting procedure was used to estimate fertility for a historical population, the Newton Plantation, Barbados (Corruccini et al. [1989] Am. Antiquity 54:609-614), with known demographic characteristics.