Middle Woodland Population of the Lower Illinois Valley (Scientific Papers, No 1)

Palaeodemography, essentially an outgrowth of the theory of prehistoric cultural ecology and the methods of historical demography and biologicalanthropology, is today an important investigative tool for archaeologists. DavidAsch uses burial-mound data in order toestimate the size and density of the population inhabiting the lower Illinois River Valley during the Middle Woodland period. By calculating total man-years (number of mound groups x average size of mound-group burial population x average age at death of burial population.