Synopsis of Today's Lab. Today we will travel to a local cemetery and record dates of birth and death etched on the headstones commemorating previous Pennsylvania residents. Objectives for Today's Lab. Equipment Needed for Fieldwork Today. From This Week s Laboratory.
Local cemeteries are an excellent place to study human demography.
Etched in the gravestones are the dates of birth and death of the person below, at least in most cases. From these data, we can calculate death rates and draw survivorship curves. A survivorship curve is simply a graphical representation of the chance that an individual will survive from birth to any particular age. By comparing survivorship curves for different periods of time we may look for historical trends in demography over the decades. Over the last few centuries, advances in health care and large-scale global political conflict have left rather opposing marks on the demographics of our population.