Life‐history theory, past human populations and climatic perturbations

A sensitivity and elasticity analysis is performed on historical life‐tables, that of Swedish females from 1751–1755 and 1966–1970, i.e. during and after the Little Ice Age. Coupled with life‐history theory, this approach supplies us with some ideas on how stature can be understood as a proxy for conditions during the intrauterine growth, important if we aspire to calibrate proposed climatic perturbations and their effect on past societies. Matrix population models represent a versatile tool that has been used extensively in conservation biology, ecology, primatology and evolutionary demography. As of yet, applications in bioarchaeology/human osteology have been restricted to population forecasting. The following paper introduces matrix population models and discusses their use in bioarchaeology.