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Status and health in Roman Dorset: The effect of status on risk of mortality in post‐conquest populations
Author(s) -
Redfern Rebecca C.,
DeWitte Sharon N.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
american journal of physical anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1096-8644
pISSN - 0002-9483
DOI - 10.1002/ajpa.21563
Subject(s) - conquest , demography , mortality rate , gompertz function , proxy (statistics) , geography , medicine , history , ancient history , sociology , machine learning , computer science
The Roman conquest of Britain was previously shown to have negatively impacted health, particularly for children, older adults, and men. We build upon this previous research by investigating the effect that status had on risks of mortality within the Roman Britain populations of Dorset. This study incorporates a sample of 291 individuals excavated from several cemeteries in the county of Dorset dating between the first to early fifth centuries AD. To assess the effect of status on risks of mortality, burial type was used as a proxy for status and modeled as a covariate affecting the Siler and Gompertz–Makeham models of mortality. The results of these analyses indicate that high‐status individuals, particularly children, had a lower mortality risk compared to lower‐status groups; and for those buried in urban cemeteries, higher‐status individuals of all age‐groups had a lower mortality risk. As with our previous study (Redfern and DeWitte: Am J Phys Anthropol 144 (2011) 269–285), we found that male mortality risk was higher than females, which we consider to reflect underlying sex‐differences in immunity and disease response. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2011. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.