Results from my dissertation research are now available:

Posters from 2007 AAPA and HBA (http://www.appstate.edu/~Robbinsgm)

Powerpoint presentation of my dissertation defense

I am interested in reconstructing population statistics, childhood health, and lifestyle for three villages (Daimabad, Inamgaon, and Nevasa) occupied during a period of climate and culture change in central-west India 3000 years ago. During this time, the semi-arid region of peninsular India was becoming increasingly dry and the monsoon climate was increasingly unpredictable. Despite a millennium of successful settlement in this region, after 1000 B.C. Deccan Chalcolithic people departed. My research seeks to characterize the demography and health of these communities just prior to the collapse. I am using a new method for fertility-centered paleodemography in subadult samples (an equation for estimating GRR from the proportion of perinates in a subadult sample) to demonstrate that just before the region was abandoned, there was a high pressure demographic situation of higher fertility, higher infant mortality, and declining settlement density. My research also involves an examination of long bone growth using a new method for estimating body mass in subadult human skeletons. Comparison of body mass to height indicates that infants and children in Chalcolithic India were not significantly different from contemporary children. This work, combined with the results of the paleodemography and previous studies on dental health, indicates that the osteological paradox may have been at work: the subadult specimens (particularly infants) appear healthy because they died prior to expressing chronic growth disruption. I suggest that there were indeed dire consequences for infant health and human populations living in the context of climate change in India at the end of the Deccan Chalcolithic. This work was the subject of my dissertation and my most recent research results will be published in my book, Climate Change and Bioarchaeology: a view form the Deccan Chalcolithic (University Press of Florida, forthcoming). Two methodological papers on paleodemography in subadult samples and body mass estimation from the subadult femur midshaft are also in prep and under review.