Szekessy Vilmos (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 59. (Budapest 1967)

Éry, K.: An anthropological study of the Late Avar Period population of Ártánd

be rejected. Let us observe, in this respect, the evolvement of the presumable life expectancy at various ages in Artand and in the Arpadian Age (Table 3). Significantly favourable life expectancy values in Artand are found only in those 0 years old, whereas the expectancy of the 5 years old are less propitious in Artand than in the Árpádian Age, and the life expectancy of the 10 years old are also somewhat worse. From the age 15 years on, the life expectancy values in Ártánd are essentially identical with the average in the Árpádian Age. It is rather improbable that the more favourable conditions of life of the population had decreased the mortality of Table 3. : Life Expectancy of the Population of Artánd and the Arpadian Age Age Artand (•2) Arpadian Age (Acsádi, 1965) (e°) 0 34. 98 28. 73 5 33. 64 35. 99 10 32. 12 33. 41 15 29. 84 30. 43 20 27. 60 27. 51 25 24. 37 24. 14 30 21. 64 21. 05 35 18. 58 18. 35 40 15. 62 15. 83 45 12. 96 13. 28 50 10. 74 10. 66 55 8. 93 9. 05 60 8. 12 7. 41 65 5. 78 5. 75 70 4. 03 4 54 75 2. 50 3 24 merely the infants; its effects should be observable also in later phases of the juvenile age. The other side of the problem is the very possibility of the existence of considerably favourable life expectancies in the Avar Period against the Árpádian Age. There is no doubt that the great number of bones of diverse domesticated animals found in the Avar Period, and primarily in the Late Avar Period graves suggests an intensive animal husbandry, and this again an increased consumption of proteins. Although the burial customs of the Árpád Age had not rendered any such objective evidence, there is no cause to suppose, on the basis of documentary data and the results of excavations of settlements, any decrease in the livestock in the Árpádian Age. The clarification of the problem is to be expected from a comparative histological analysis of the bones on the one hand and the investigation of mortality conditions of further Avar Period cemeteries on the other. One fact is indisputable: there are only very few pathological deformities visible to the naked eye on the post-cranial bones of Ártánd, and they, too, are but slight or at most of medium gravity. The low number of child graves might therefore be due to the fact that some of the infants and children had not been buried in cemeteries in the Avar Period. No objective evidence substantiated this assumption up to now, but at the end of 1966 it was reported in a newspaper that archeologists had successfully discovered the first Avar Period village in the Transdanubia, wherein they have discovered the grave, near one of the houses, of a child ornamented with a pearl necklace, hence