Population dynamics in the Middle Ages in Central Europe: Reconstruction based on age-at-death distributions of skeletal samples

Kód výsledku v IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F49777513%3A23330%2F23%3A43969033" target="_blank" >RIV/49777513:23330/23:43969033 - isvavai.cz</a>

Výsledek na webu

<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440323000961?via%3Dihub" target="_blank" >https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440323000961?via%3Dihub</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2023.105816" target="_blank" >10.1016/j.jas.2023.105816</a>

Jazyk výsledku

angličtina

Název v původním jazyce

Population dynamics in the Middle Ages in Central Europe: Reconstruction based on age-at-death distributions of skeletal samples

Popis výsledku v původním jazyce

Demography plays an important role in domains related to socio-cultural complexity, subsistence strategies, and cultural ecology. Although the Middle Ages in Central Europe (ca. 500-1500 CE) was a period of major political, economic, and socio-cultural change arising from the establishment of the first principalities and the adoption of Christianity by the West Slavic tribes, our knowledge about its population dynamics is based only on archaeological studies and rare historical sources. This study is based on skeletal data. We predicted population growth and fertility levels using the proportion of non-adults in skeletal samples quantified with the D5+/D20+ ratio (the ratio of the number of skeletons older than 5 years to the number of skeletons of those older than 20 years). We adopted a new methodology that accounts for stochastic variation in small-sized skeletal samples. We computed the D5+/D20+ ratio in a large sample of 59 skeletal samples (12,805 individuals) from four chronological stages of the Middle Ages and predicted the growth and total fertility rates and reconstructed their profiles over the chronological frame between 500 and 1500 CE. Our main result is that the growth and fertility rates increased during the politically and economically favourable period of the Great Moravian Empire (9th century CE) and then dropped significantly after the collapse of the whole system in the Post-Great Moravian Period (900-1200 CE). We estimate that the decline in fertility represented a decrease of 1.0-1.2 children per woman, on average. We hypothesize that the observed fertility change might be a response to deteriorated conditions, which decreased overall reproductive success.

Název v anglickém jazyce

Population dynamics in the Middle Ages in Central Europe: Reconstruction based on age-at-death distributions of skeletal samples

Popis výsledku anglicky

Demography plays an important role in domains related to socio-cultural complexity, subsistence strategies, and cultural ecology. Although the Middle Ages in Central Europe (ca. 500-1500 CE) was a period of major political, economic, and socio-cultural change arising from the establishment of the first principalities and the adoption of Christianity by the West Slavic tribes, our knowledge about its population dynamics is based only on archaeological studies and rare historical sources. This study is based on skeletal data. We predicted population growth and fertility levels using the proportion of non-adults in skeletal samples quantified with the D5+/D20+ ratio (the ratio of the number of skeletons older than 5 years to the number of skeletons of those older than 20 years). We adopted a new methodology that accounts for stochastic variation in small-sized skeletal samples. We computed the D5+/D20+ ratio in a large sample of 59 skeletal samples (12,805 individuals) from four chronological stages of the Middle Ages and predicted the growth and total fertility rates and reconstructed their profiles over the chronological frame between 500 and 1500 CE. Our main result is that the growth and fertility rates increased during the politically and economically favourable period of the Great Moravian Empire (9th century CE) and then dropped significantly after the collapse of the whole system in the Post-Great Moravian Period (900-1200 CE). We estimate that the decline in fertility represented a decrease of 1.0-1.2 children per woman, on average. We hypothesize that the observed fertility change might be a response to deteriorated conditions, which decreased overall reproductive success.

Druh

J_imp - Článek v periodiku v databázi Web of Science

CEP obor

—

OECD FORD obor

50404 - Anthropology, ethnology

Projekt

<a href="/cs/project/GA19-17810S" target="_blank" >GA19-17810S: Změny intenzit plodnosti a populačního přírůstku ve střední Evropě od neolitu po středověk: využití stochastických simulací</a><br>

Návaznosti

P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)

Rok uplatnění

2023

Kód důvěrnosti údajů

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Název periodika

JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SCIENCE

ISSN

0305-4403

e-ISSN

1095-9238

Svazek periodika

156

Číslo periodika v rámci svazku

August 2023

Stát vydavatele periodika

NL - Nizozemsko

Počet stran výsledku

11

Strana od-do

—

Kód UT WoS článku

001034984300001

EID výsledku v databázi Scopus

2-s2.0-85162887162