Abstract
LiVES-COstA Digest: Checked and updated entries from the LiVES Collection of Osteological Anthropometry
The research project LiVES (living conditions and biological standard of living in prehistoric Europe and South West Asia) running from 2011 to 2019 and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG; RO/4148-1, PI Eva Rosenstock) focused on human stature as a possible reflection of general living conditions, health and diet and, hence, as a potential proxy for the biological standard of living in prehistory.
Description
In order to obtain a sufficient amount of osteological proxy data for prehistoric body height, the project collected data from more recent publications and in addition acquired data from older publications from two already existing data collections: the Mainzer Lochkartenarchiv für prähistorische und historische Anthropologie (Mainz punch card archive for prehistoric and historic anthropology; Schwidetzky - Creel 1971; Perscheid 1974; Schwidetzky - Jäger 1991) and the Geneva-based Anthropological Data Acquisition and Management (ADAM; Bertato et al. 2003).
These had to be extensively updated especially regarding the often outdated chronological and imprecise geographical information contained (see Ebert et al. 2019 for details). All three collections were integrated with a new and updated online data base LiVES-COstA (LiVES Collection of Osteological Anthropometry).
With a total of 6901 skeletal entries, this is currently the largest digital collection of prehistoric long bone measurements and stature estimations for the period up to ca. 600 BC in Europe and Southwest Asia. In total, 7686 skeletal entries from LiVES COstA have been checked and updated by LiVES to meet the current state of research. As these entries not only form the sample underlying the analyses of the LiVES project, but also may serve as a first-grasp inquiry tool to find anthropometric and anthropological data, they are published here as an extract of the LiVES-COstA database “LiVES COstA Digest”.
Further information
The history of the database is described in:
J. Ebert – R. Martin – J. Desideri – M. Besse – W. Henke – M. Groß – E. Rosenstock, Dusting off ancient anthropometric data banks. Mainz Punch Card Archive, Geneva ADAM and their integration with the updated and enlarged LiVES COstA online data base.
DOI: 10.17171/2-12-6-1 - Link see below.
Access to the full online LiVES COstA database including all yet unchecked and not yet updated historic data can be given to researchers for specific scientific purposes. Please send inquiries to e.rosenstock@fu-berlin.de
References
Perscheid 1974
M. Perscheid, Das Mainzer Lochkartenarchiv für postkraniales Skelettmaterial prähistorischer Populationen, Homo 25, 1974, 121–124.
Schwidetzky – Creel 1971
I. Schwidetzky - N. Creel, Das Mainzer Lochkartenarchiv für die prähistorische Anthropologie, Homo 22, 1971, 41–42.
Schwidetzky – Jäger 1991
I. Schwidetzky - H.-J. Jäger, The Data Base for prehistorical and historical anthropology in Mainz, Homo 42, 1991, 163–170.
Without extensive support from our colleagues, this data collection would have not been possible, and we extend our kindest thanks to
- Nicola Köpke and Jörg Baten for sharing their data collections
- Winfried Henke for consigning the care for the Mainz punch card archive for prehistoric and historic anthropology and its initial partly digitized version to our research project
- Jocelyne Desideri and Marie Besse for giving us access to the Geneva-based Anthropological Data Acquisition and Management (ADAM)
- SRZ Berlin as well as INWT Statistics Berlin, the IT service of the Department of History and Cultural Studies and the Zentrum für Datenverarbeitung (zedat) at Freie Universität Berlin for their support with digitization, data integration and hosting for LiVES COSTA
- LiVES group members Andreas Hicketier, Alisa Hujić, Alisa Scheibner and Paul Walter as well as Joachim Wahl for helpful discussions and hints.
Research Group
Eva Rosenstock, Julia Ebert, Robert Martin and Marcus Groß
