Körpergewicht und BMI bezeugen einen hohen Lebensstandars im europäischen Mittelalter

Abstract

Body mass (BM) and body mass index (BMI) are often used as proxies for biological standard of living, and in medicine to identify weight related health risks. In archaeology, BM estimation was applied to early hominines (Ruff u. a. 1991; McHenry 1992; Grine u. a. 1995; Auerbach/Ruff 2004), but only exceptionally to individuals from agricultural populations (Ruff u. a. 2006). The present study applies four BM estimation formula based on femoral head to a systematic collection of medieval populations (4th–15th c. AD ) from Central Europe (33 series, 1349 individuals with known sex and age, i.e. 718 males, 631 females). The comparison of the estimations indicates the span of possible errors and shows the most plausible solution, given by the combination of BM estimation after Auerbach/ Ruff (2004) and stature estimation after Pearson (1899). The mean body mass of males in medieval times was 71 kg, of females 59 kg, mean BMI was 25.5 resp. 24.5, which indicates a good standard of living. The results are differentiated among age groups, social groups and periods within medieval age. The mean BMI increased significantly from early to late medieval times by 1.0 (♂) resp. 1.1 (♀), which was caused by a reduction of mean stature of 3.2 cm (♂) resp. 2.9 cm (♀). Comparison of BM, stature and BMI demonstrates a higher standard of living for subadults in Early Medieval time compared to 8th to 15th century. Different social groups within adults, as indicated by the early medieval grave goods, show no significant differences in BMI.