ABSTRACT
Pithekoussai had by the end of the eighth century a population of between 5,000 and 10,000. In the case of Pithekoussai, the evidence is archaeological. The data from Pithekoussai and those from Egypt that offer a death rate are almost a thousand years apart, and there are many possible reasons why the mortality regime might be different. The presence of a large number of child and infant graves is particularly interesting in this case, for it implies that Pithekoussai was not a place of transient residents, serving their time in a 'frontier' area before returning to their native cities to 'settle down'. At Pithekoussai not only does the total number of burials almost treble between the third and the last quarters of the eighth century, but the proportion of those burials that are of infants and children also increases.
