ABSTRACT
The estimation of age at death from the human skeleton, particularly of adults, poses a universally well-recognised and well-documented problem in both bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology (e.g. Jackes, 2000; Nawrocki, 2010; Falys and Lewis, 2011; Roksandic and Armstrong, 2011; Milner and Boldsen, 2012; Gowland and Thompson, 2013). The aims of this chapter are to describe in detail the process of age estimation for a large prehistoric skeletal sample and to present an alternative conceptual approach to the interpretation of the age estimates. We address the research question of how to produce meaningful age estimates for adults and adolescents for use in interpretation of population samples and explain how the Southeast Asian context may influence the way in which these age groups change with age. As the interpretation of the significance of the resulting age estimates for the health and mortality patterns of the sample requires detailed analysis and integration with the evidence from infants and children, these research questions are not addressed here and will be the subject of later publications.
