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Comparative stature analysis in Greece from Prehistory to late antiquity: (Doctoral thesis)

Κούκλη, Μαριάννα/ Koukli, Marianna

Adult human stature is one of the four main biological traits, along with sex, age-at-death and ancestry. It is essential for all subfields of physical anthropology, such as bioarchaeology and osteoarchaeology. Stature is influenced by both genetic and environmental factors, and it can provide information concerning issues related to past human “individual biographies” and to the evolution of physical characteristics of past societies. Two major methodologies have been proposed to estimate body height from skeletal remains: the Anatomical, which is considered to provide the most accurate estimations, and the Mathematical, which employs regression equations as stature prediction models. The present study aims to fill in the gaps in our knowledge of body height trends in ancient Greece and to present new methodological pathways in stature estimation. The osteological sample used in the present research consists of 1060 individuals. Out of the above sample, the anthropometric data of 599 individuals (296 males, 303 females) were measured by the author (Ancient Greek series dataset), whereas bone measurements from 461 skeletons (270 males, 191 females) were collected by the original publications (Anthropometric Data Collected from Literature dataset). All 1060 individuals originate from many settlements of ancient Greece and they are dated from the Mesolithic to early Byzantine times. Out of the above, 129 almost perfectly preserved individuals were used as the reference sample. Population-specific equations from and for ancient Greek populations have been generated for the first time here, presenting also a profoundly well application to various test populations. Comparisons between Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Reduced Major Axis (RMA) sets of formulae showed that the former can provide slightly better estimations. A new, promising methodological method, the Logarithmic Human Stature Index (LHSI) is introduced aiming to simplify inter- and intra- populations anthropometric comparisons. Mean stature trends of the ancient Greeks throughout the Hellenic antiquity ranged from 159.7 cm to 170.6 cm for males and from 153.4 cm to 160.4 cm for females. Furthermore, four significant critical signs of stature fluctuations have been observed: the increase of male stature from the Neolithic to Bronze Age; the slight but gradual increase of male and female stature in the early Iron Age and Archaic/Classical periods; the significant loss of stature in the Hellenistic centuries; and its radical increase from the Roman times onwards. The above trends are similar to their neighboring populations from Europe.