Seasonal Mortality in a Medieval Iranian City

Collegium antropologicum, 2015

Seasonal fluctuations in mortality and their causes in the nineteenth century Polish rural populations: wealthy, agriculturally and economically advanced populations from Wielkopolska, and poor populations from Silesia and Galicia (southern Poland) were described. Data-sources included parish death registers from the Roman Catholic parish of Dziekanowice in the region of Wielkopolska, Prussian statistical yearbooks for the Pozna Province as well as information from previous publications regarding Silesia and Galicia. The 19th century patterns were compared with those in present-day Poland. The occurrence of seasonality of deaths was assessed with: the Chi-squared test, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, and the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average Models (ARIMA). In all populations there was a winter maximum of the number of deaths, while the minimum occurred in early summer. In the poor populations of Silesia and Galicia another statistically significant increase in the incidence of ...

PLOS ONE

Background Seasonal variability in mortality has been studied in various regions globally. Proper evaluation of seasonally fluctuating mortality is important to establish effective public health measures. We investigated the overall, age-specific, and cause-specific seasonality of deaths in Chitral District in Pakistan. Method Data on 2577 deaths were provided by the Agha Khan Health Support Program. Seasonal mortality patterns concerning age and causes were examined using the X-12 ARIMA pseudo-additive decomposition method. Results Of the total deceased, 59.6% were males. The proportion of deceased males was significantly higher than the female (40.4%, p< 0.001). The average age at death was 57.7 years (SD = 28.7). On average, approximately 43 deaths occurred each month. More than 10% of the deaths occurred in children less than 5-years-of-age. Among all the causes of death, the most frequent was cardiovascular disease (n = 666, 25.8%) followed by respiratory disease (n = 482, 18.7%). Significant seasonality in the overall deaths was evident, with a peak in winter. Deaths in people � 55-years-of-age were significantly seasonal and peaked in winter. Deaths due to cardiovascular, respiratory, and kidney related diseases were also significantly seasonal with winter peaks. Further, deaths due to external causes were significantly seasonal with summer peak. Conclusion In the winter season, all-cause, except external, and age-specific mortality peaks in Chitral District, Pakistan. Deaths due to external causes and cardiovascular, respiratory, and kidney related diseases were significant seasonal effects.

Archaeology, Ethnology and Anthropology of Eurasia, 2022

Based on archaeological materials from the Kamennyi Ambar-5 cemetery, we test the hypothesis about the connection between the seasonality of pastoral practices and funerary rites during the Late Bronze Age (early 2nd millennium BC). We studied growth layers in the teeth of 24 cows, 19 sheep/goats, 14 horses, a dog, and ten humans from 17 graves. We combined samples from various species from the same contexts into eight assemblages. With regard to animals, differences in seasons of death were revealed only once. 70 % of graves were arranged in spring and 30 % in autumn. Therefore, the hypothesis about the seasonal use of the cemetery can be supported at least partially. The contemporaneous settlement of Kamennyi Ambar demonstrates a similar tendency in the seasonality of animal slaughtering. However, the reasons for slaughtering at the settlement differed from those in the cemetery. At the settlement site, it was motivated by practical needs, and in themortuary site, only by the seasonality of human deaths, kurgan burials were arranged only for some individuals. In practice, several of the above factors overlapped, resulting in an anomalous composition of the buried cohort (disproportion of sexes and a higher proportion of individuals who died at the peak of vital activity).

Journal of Thermal Biology, 2019

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Canadian Medical Association Journal, 2009

Early release, published at www.cmaj.ca on September 21, 2009. Subject to revision.

Sociological Spectrum , 2006

Data from cemeteries can provide social scientists with rich, longitudinal data on death patterns . To improve social scientist's understanding of the seasonal patterns of deaths to African Americans in the postemancipation era, this research uses cemetery records and frames the pattern in the context of the demographic transition and modernization theories. The vast majority of previous research has considered impacts on seasonality in isolation-without controls for demographic variables. Therefore, researchers do not know how seasonality effects are influenced by demographics, socioeconomic factors, and=or change over time. The inequality in seasonality of death can be attributed to three main factors: a lack of access to (1) quality healthcare, (2) temperature management, and (3) the education required to have an occupation of higher status than general laborer. These three qualities, often seen in segments of society that are labeled ''second class,'' are seen in the population under study and in many populations throughout the developing world.

American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 2013

Scholarship on life in medieval European monasteries has revealed a variety of factors that potentially affected mortality in these communities. Though there is some evidence based on age-at-death distributions from England that monastic males lived longer than members of the general public, what is missing from the literature is an explicit examination of how the risks of mortality within medieval monastic settings differed from those within contemporaneous lay populations. This study examines differences in the hazard of mortality for adult males between monastic cemeteries (n 5 528) and non-monastic cemeteries (n 5 368) from London, all of which date to between AD 1050 and 1540. Age-at-death data from all cemeteries are pooled to estimate the Gompertz hazard of mortality, and "monastic" (i.e., buried in a monastic cemetery) is modeled as a covariate affecting this baseline hazard. The estimated effect of the monastic covariate is negative, suggesting that individuals in the monastic communities faced reduced risks of dying compared to their peers in the lay communities. These results suggest better diets, the positive health benefits of religious behavior, better living conditions in general in monasteries, or selective recruitment of healthy or higher socioeconomic status individuals.

Mortality in general, and especially amongst the oldest old, is known to be partially shaped by seasons: winter is classically characterized by excess mortality. We therefore put forward the use of season-related life tables to study the mortality trajectories of the oldest old. This approach can be used to explore the plasticity of longevity, by opposing winter and summer trajectories. Furthermore, summer-related life tables summarize the best conditions of mortality, i.e., the lowest values and the least fluctuating pattern. Results are presented for Switzerland, where season-related life tables have been computed until age 110.

Background: Late medieval England underwent intensive urbanisation, particularly in its largest city: London. Urban dwellers were exposed to factors such as high population density, elevated risk of infection, unsanitary living conditions and precarious food supplies. Aim: To assess whether the urban environment was more detrimental to health than the rural environment, this study compares risks of mortality and survival, as proxies for health, in medieval urban vs rural England. Subjects and methods: This study uses samples from rural St. Peter’s cemetery in Bartonupon- Humber, Lincolnshire (c. 1150–1500) and urban St. Mary Spital cemetery in London (c. 1120–1539). Cox proportional hazards analysis and Kaplan-Meier survival analysis are used to assess differences in mortality and survival between urban and rural environments, including differences between sexes. Results: The results indicate that urban adults faced elevated risks of dying and reductions in survivorship. Specifically, urban females faced elevated risks of dying and reductions in survivorship, while the risks for males were similar in both environments. Discussion: These results suggest that the effects of urbanisation in medieval England varied by sex. Deleterious conditions associated with urbanisation in London were hazardous for adults, particularly females who may have migrated into London from rural areas for labour opportunities.