ABSTRACT
Understanding the mortality conditions of the Dobe !Kung is an essential part of task in this chapter, but the resources available for the analysis are, inferior to those available to John Graunt, when he compiled "Bills of Mortality" which included age and cause of death. Even in populations with excellent systems of medical care and record keeping, it is often difficult to determine the causes of death and disability. For each death reported, the living informants were asked "What killed him?" In this chapter, the author considers the information available on the answer to this question. A social cost of morbidity and mortality is the loss of income to the group that results from the inability of one of the productive adults to work. Violence may have been a higher cause of death in the past, but it seems likely that the addition of the cattlepost alternative to bush living may have changed !Kung mortality primarily through the incidence of death as a consequence of serious injury and sickness.
