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Lebensbedingungen und biologischer Lebensstandard in der Vorgeschichte Südwestasiens und Europas: anthropometrische, cliometrische und archäometrische Ansätze

Applicant Dr. Eva Rosenstock
Subject Area Prehistory and World Archaeology
Term from 2011 to 2018
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 191679692
 
Final Report Year 2025

Final Report Abstract

The project LiVES investigated the development of body height between the Mesolithic and Late Bronze Age in South-West Asia and Europe with a team of archaeologists, anthropologists and statisticians. The aim was to investigate the applicability of body height as an approximate value for nutrition during the growth period and thus as a biological measure of well-being in prehistory. To this end, long-bone lengths of 6901 individuals were updated on the basis of two older data collections on archaeological skeletons according to the current state of research in the literature. On this data basis, it was possible for the first time to coherently model the course of body height in the study area and period using a Bayesian algorithm that also takes measurement errors into account. In a further database, 2649 published measurements of stable nitrogen and carbon isotopes were compiled for the working area and period, thus tracing the development of the prehistoric diet. However, the correlation between body height and dietary protein intake during the growth phase postulated by economic historians could not be proven either by analysing the two data sets together or on the basis of a narrowly defined Early Neolithic population (Southwest German Linear Pottery, 2nd half of the 6th millennium BC): Isotope measurement data from teeth (which are formed in childhood and adolescence) and ribs (as a signal from adulthood) had little predictive power with regard to body height. Only after taking into account genetics, which play a decisive role in determining body height, together with diet in adulthood, a further study showedfirst correlations that point to a growth inhibition in women in the Central German Linear Pottery. However, this result still leaves open the question of whether the diet in childhood and adolescence was the cause here, or whether the disadvantage of women is to be localised in the socio-economic-political-emotional or SEPE area. The use of body height as a proxy for the biological standard of living, as successfully pursued by economic historians and development scientists, especially with modern data, therefore requires good (population) genetic control in large-scale spatial and temporal comparisons; in addition, all analyses should take into account that body height is not only determined genetically and by diet, but also represents a social signal that may be additionally modulated by SEPE factors during the growth phase.

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