Osseous Frame Index calculations of the early medieval South-West Germany.

Abstract

The proper description of former populations is one of the most difficult tasks in anthropology. Archaeological material is often limited due to fragmented and sometimes poorly preserved bone material resulting in incomplete data. Published skeletal raw data are available from the past, but much of this data is either unavailable or not used for scientific studies. The authors seek to elicit more information about prehistoric times by using this dataset to introduce a new method. The purpose is to provide an approach to reconstruct a former population in respect to robusticity and health status. For this in the pilot study the Body Mass Index (BMI) and Frame Index (FI) of early medieval South-West Germany have been analysed. The FI, in contrast to the BMI, has not yet been used for robusticity analysis utilizing only skeletal remains. As far as we know, this is the first time that the FI has been calculated using archaeological material. Due to unknown soft-tissue thickness we introduce the Osseous Frame Index (OFI). The measured OFI reveals new insights in (pre-)historic populations and allows comparisons with modern reference samples. Our OFI calculations are relatively similar to modern calculations. Males have a higher robusticity than females, slightly increasing during life-time compared to females. These calculations provide a better historical understanding of human body composition.