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Inferring Fertility from Relative Mortality in Historically Controlled Cemetery Remains from Barbados

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Robert S. Corruccini ,
Elizabeth M. Brandon  and
Jerome S. Handler
Robert S. Corruccini
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 62901
Elizabeth M. Brandon
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 62901
Jerome S. Handler
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 62901
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Abstract

Fertility (crude birth rate) was estimated from skeletal and corresponding historical relative mortality ratios for a seventeenth- to eighteenth-century Barbados slave population. The estimates varied widely among themselves according to which data source and mortality ratio was used; they also varied from the actual historical fertility rate. In addition, we have raised logical objections to the use of stable model life tables for inferring nonstable vital rates in archaeological populations. These points are problematic for the broad use of relative mortality to infer relative fertility.

Résumé

Résumé

La fertilidad (índice de natalidad bruta) de una población de esclavos en la Barbada, para los siglos XVII al XIX, fue calculada por los esqueletos y por la proporción de mortalidad histórica relativa correspondiente. Los cálculos varían mucho entre sí mismos, según la fuente de datos y la proporción de mortalidad usada; también varían del índice real de nacimientos. Además, hemos hecho objeciónes lógicas contra el uso de tablas de modelos de vida estables para ínferir indices vitales no estables en las poblaciónes arqueológicas. Estos son aspectos problemáticos ante el amplio uso de mortalidad relativa para inferir fertilidad relativa.

Type
Comments
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 54 , Issue 3 , July 1989 , pp. 609 - 614
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1989

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