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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2020 May 26.
Published in final edited form as: Bioarchaeol Int. 2019;3(1):58–77. doi: 10.5744/bi.2019.1008

Table 1. Selected skeletal data for moments in the human life span, listing indicators used in this study.

Life Stage Data Groupings Used in Table 2 and Figure 7
Birth Sex (assigning social gender) (Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994; Workshop of European Anthropologists 1980) Male, female
Childhood Enamel hypoplasia, total number of lesions observed on all teeth in dentition macroscopically using strong oblique light (Goodman and Rose 1991) 1 lesion, 2–3 lesions, 4+ lesions
Cribra orbitalia (Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994) Present / absent
Stature achieved by adulthood; estimated using all available long bones (Trotter and Gleser 1958) Lower ¼ of male or female range, middle of male or female range, upper ¼ of male or female range
Adult life Traumas as evidence of life risks, identified macroscopically (Ortner and Aufderheide 1991; Ortner and Putschar 1981; for more detail on trauma in this collection, see Robb 1997) Present/ absent
Dental disease (caries, antemortem tooth loss) Presence/absence
Schmorl’s nodes, number of vertebrae affected (Ortner and Putschar 1981) 0, 1–4, 5–7, 8+
New bone growth (Ortner and Aufderheide 1991; Ortner and Putschar 1981; cf. Weston 2012) “periostitis”: present/absent anywhere in the skeleton “tibial periostitis”: present/ absent in the tibia(s)
Arthropathies as evidence of habitual activity (Rogers and Waldron 1995; Rogers et al. 1987; cf. Waldron 2012) “osteoarthritis”: presence or absence of marginal bone proliferation, porosity and eburnation
“eburnation”:
presence or absence of eburnated surfaces
Entheseal variation as evidence of habitual activity (recorded as grades of expression between 1 and 5, with average entheseal score used to characterize overall skeleton) (Hawkey and Merbs 1995; Robb 1998) (cf. Fig. 2) Mean entheseal score, grouped into lower ¼ of male or female range, middle of male or female range, upper ¼ of male or female range
Traits potentially related to specialized activity (see text for explanation) “specialized activity: presence/ absence of several relevant traits”
Death Age at death, representing longevity and mortality as conditioned by social factors (Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994; Workshop of European Anthropologists 1980) Decade of age at death
Treatment at death Total pottery vessels deposited in the grave (Fig. 6, Table 2: 0 vessels, 1–5 vessels, 6+ vessels) 0 vessels, 1–5 vessels, 6+ vessels
Grave goods other than pottery Presence or absence of grave goods other than pottery
Presence or absence of specifically “female” ornaments
Presence or absence of specifically “male” objects (weapons, armour, strigils)
Presence or absence of other objects