Dr. T. Tóth szerk.: Studia historico-anthropologica (Anthropologia Hungarica 12. Budapest, 1973)

servation, the fact that the sex ration is pronouncedly favourable to females in the case of children,bears out the inference that this phenomenon may be connected with some burial rite, having a yet unknow social background. Instead of the partial uncovering, the age-group distribution of the series presents the picture of a normal population. In the first place this is visible in the ratio of children and adults 42:58, corresponding to the normal mortality conditions. The 29.O value of life expectancy at birth is also approximately real. As one may see in the abridged life-table (Table 3), the life expectancy of men was somewhat less favourable than that of women. Twenty years old men had a life expectancy of further 27.4 years, whereas women of the same age could await to live further 28.1 years. The unusual phenomenon that the mortality rate of women in the reproductive age (between 15 and 40 years of age) is more favourable than that of men of the same age group, allows the conclusion that the male population was subjected to a heavier physiological burden, possibly owing to military service. PATHOLOGICAL STATUS Prom the macroscopic investigation of the osteological material of the population and the results of chemical analysis one may come to the general statement that men sufferred from degenerative changes in the first place, whereas women and especially children had malnutritional diseases in a larger percentage. Degenerative changes (spondylosis, spondylarthrosis, arthrosis deformans, etc.), mostly with medium severity, may be shown on males in 44 per cent of the investigated cases. Ankylosis ,be

ing a severe deformation, was apparent in the following places: the block of 3 thoracic vertebrae (grave 35/a): the block of the