Testing times: identifying puberty in an identified skeletal sample

What is it about?

This paper tests a method for identifying adolescent development and the onset of puberty from skeletal remains in a collection of skeletons with known sex and known age-at-death. Results show good concordance with historical data from the same time period.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Adolescence is a difficult time of life: the body and mind as well as the role in society change from that of a child to adulthood. Being able to identify this in past populations provides access to past population's ideas childhood, adolescence, adulthood, marriageable age etc. It can also provide evolutionary perspectives on the change in age of the onset of menarche, which has decreased with improved living standards. This is an important area of research because menarcheal age can determine health in later life, and in some societies indicates marriageable age.