Whittington S L
Hudson Museum, University of Maine, Orono 04469.
Am J Phys Anthropol. 1991 Jun;85(2):167-84. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.1330850206.
Heterogeneity and small sample size are problems that affect many paleodemographic studies. The former can cause the overall distribution of age at death to be an amalgam that does not accurately reflect the distributions of any of the groups composing the heterogeneous population. The latter can make it difficult to separate significant from nonsignificant demographic differences between groups. Survival analysis, a methodology that involves the survival distribution function and various regression models, can be applied to distributions of age at death in order to reveal statistically significant demographic differences and to control for heterogeneity. Survival analysis was used on demographic data from a heterogeneous sample of skeletons of low status Maya who lived in and around Copan, Honduras, between A.D. 400 and 1200. Results contribute to understanding the collapse of Classic Maya civilization.
异质性和小样本量是影响许多古人口统计学研究的问题。前者会导致死亡年龄的总体分布成为一种混合体，无法准确反映构成异质人群的任何群体的分布情况。后者会使区分不同群体之间显著和不显著的人口统计学差异变得困难。生存分析是一种涉及生存分布函数和各种回归模型的方法，可以应用于死亡年龄分布，以揭示具有统计学意义的人口统计学差异并控制异质性。对公元400年至1200年间生活在洪都拉斯科潘及其周边地区的低地位玛雅人骨骼的异质样本的人口数据进行了生存分析。研究结果有助于理解古典玛雅文明的衰落。
