Alba Regia. Annales Musei Stephani Regis. – Alba Regia. Az István Király Múzeum Évkönyve. 10. 1969 – Szent István Király Múzeum közleményei: C sorozat (1969)

Tanulmányok – Abhandlungen - Éry Kinga, K.: Investigations on the Demographic Source Value of Tomb Stones Originating from the Roman Period. – Vizsgálatok a római kori sírfeliratok demográfiai forrásértékéről. X, 1969. p. 51–67.

Fig. 1 : Age group frequencies of skeletal remains from the Roman Period and Árpádian Age with the distribution of model life-tables (heavy line). lation. The high level of infantile and juvenile mortality in Western Europe began to decrease essentially only in the second half of the nineteenth century, that in Central and Eastern Europe merely from the beginning of the twentieth century. In theory, therefore, the frequency trend of age group mortality (expressed in age groups per 10 years) is characterized from late ancient times to the middle of the nineteenth century by the maximum values of mortality appearing invariably between 1 — 9 years of age, and the minimum values between 10— 19 years. Over 20 years of age, the number of deaths gradually increase, reaching the maximum in the mature age again (usually between 50 — 60 years) which, however, never attains the level of the 0 — 9 years group. Over 60 years of age, the number of deaths again decreases. But to return to the analysis of the inscription material. If, first, the age group distribution of the combined data deriving from the provinces is examined as related to the model distributions, two fundamental statements can immediately be made (Fig. 2). First, the age group frequency of the tomb inscriptions fails to align itself, even as to trend, to the model distributions; secondly, there appear considerable regional differences in the age group distributions. Investigators up to date already made several remarks with regard to these two basic phenomena, and references shall be made to them also in the followings. Let us first examine the age group characteristics of the distributions. For the age group 0—9 years, the case numbers are less in the entire area than what should be expected according to the laws of mortality. However, while the number of inscriptions relating to this age group is slightly more in Europe, it is strikingly small in Africa. On the other hand, the proportion of those between 10 — 19 years of age is considerably higher, for almost the entire area under discussion, than expectable by the model distribution. The percentage of the age group 20 — 29 years is still higher, and disproportionately so, because, according to the inscriptions, the mortality maximum appears to occur in this age group in most of the European provinces! The ratio of those 30 — 39 years old is also high. Over 40 years of age, the frequency of data gradually and significantly decreases — contrarily to the laws of mortality — in the European provinces, whereas an increase appears, expecially over 60 years of age, in Africa. The age group distribution of the tomb inscriptions thus deviates, and at several points very considerably so, from the normal distribution and this fact is explainable only by the assumption that the dead of the various age groups had been commemorated in divers frequencies by inscriptions. It inevitably follows that the life expectancies calculated from the means of the age data on the inscriptions cannot be considered objective and évaluable with respect to the mortality of the population. What does research say on this subject ? To those examining this problem with a critical eye, it was primarily the disproportionateness of the data referring to age groups 0—9 and over 60 years which was expecially striking. According to W i 11 с о x

14 and Bur n

15

, those below 15 years of age and those above 60 have to be eliminated from investigations, the former owing to their underrepresentation, the latter to their overrepresentation. Durand

16 restricted research even further by considering only the males, aged 15—43 years, suitable for life expectancy calculations; still, he had to increase the life expectancy values reconstructed from the data of this age group by several years hypothetically, since the extremely low value, obtained by his calculations, implies such a high rate of mortality that it would mean a 50 per cent decrease of the population in 100 years. By doubling the data of the 0—5 years old group, Rüssel

17 attempted to improve the reliability of the value of life-expectancy. As I have pointed out above, L. Henry was the first to occupy the position of complete negation; though he had analysed the age group distribution of a single city in Gallia (Burdigala), he came to the conclusion that children on the one hand had been disproportionately less commemorated than was to be expected on the basis of their usually high mortality rate, while, on the other, rather those adults had been commemorated by inscriptions who died not in I* W. F WILLCOX.o. cpp.II. 17-21. i« A. R. BURN, о. с I

6 J. D. DURAND, о. с, p. 370, pp. 372-373, " J. С RÜSSEL, о. с, pp. 24-25, 54