Archaeology as a science is characterized by a frustrating lack of direct evidence and an astounding abundance of tantalizing bits of data about the past. Many scholars (me included when I was working in the field) toy with statistics, carefully taking measurements of poorly and not-so-poorly preserved artifacts and attempting to rebuild a meaning that is, well, let's be honest, essentially lost. One fairly controversial method archaeologists use is called paleodemography.
You're probably familiar with demographics--especially in election years, when polling institutions calculate how a neighborhood is likely to vote in a particular year. Demographers uses census data, usually coupled with interviews, to figure out the population structure of a city or neighborhood--how old are they, what ethnic groups reside there, are there families with children, etc. One neighborhood has a relatively elderly population, so they're likely to vote one way; another neighborhood is primarily Hispanic, so they're likely to vote another way.
The results of demographic studies are often presented in a population pyramid, like this one, calculated by Wikimedia user Rodriguillo, who used the 1900 Federal Census of Spain to build it. The pink side is women; the blue is men, the length of the bars reflects the percent of population in each age group. As you can see, Spain was experiencing a bit of a baby boom at the time, with 30% or better of its population under the age of 15.
Paleodemographics is what its practitioners call the attempt to do the same for prehistoric communities--but without the benefit of census data and social interview. Paleodemographics are based on data from cemeteries, and the data are hard to get, hard to interpret and extremely hard to fully support.
Read all about Paleodemography and why the data are so useful, and yet the information they carry is so tantalizingly out of reach.
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