Preliminary study of the age-at-death profile in a prehistoric skeletal sample from Médano Petroquímica Site, Argentina

Abstract

In Bioarchaeology, the paleodemographic analysis has been widely questioned and is often reduced to a simple study of the age and sex composition in skeletal series. This work constitutes the first paleodemographic approach for the Médano Petroquímica site (La Pampa, Argentina). We discuss different paleodemographic parameters based on the analysis of the human bone remains recovered from the site. The results obtained from the study of 75 individuals show an attritional mortality curve, with two mortality peaks, one for infants under one year of age and one for young adults. This profile suggests the presence of high infant mortality and high exposure to risk situations in young adults, which is consistent with previous studies about prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies in the region. Besides, the calculated juvenile index (JI) suggests, on the one hand, that it would be a growing population and, on the other, that the sample would not be biased.