成人骨骼年龄的估计向来是存在许多困难和争议的。通过对其发展历程的回顾可知,尽管早已研发出了相对较可靠的用耻骨联合、髂骨耳状关节面等特征部位的形态估计年龄的方法,但鉴于“年龄模拟效应”的存在,这些方法都不可避免地会使估计的结果出现偏差。建立在贝叶斯方法和最大似然估计的基础上,Jesper Boldsen等研发出的“过渡分析”能够有效地消除上述不良影响。借助ADBOU软件,通过对山西先秦时期人骨样本进行过渡分析的实践,发现传统的形态观察法和过渡分析法会造成估计得到的死亡年龄结构出现差异。由于年龄估计结果的差异会对古人口学研究造成显著影响,因此建议在借鉴过渡分析的基础上,加强对年龄估计方法的改进。

There had always been difficulties and controversies in estimating adult human skeleton’s age. Via reviewing the development of the estimation methods, it revealed that these methods would inevitably lead to biased results because of the effect of “age mimicry”, although the methods which based on the traits such as pubic symphysis and auricular surface on the ilium had been developed for a long time and was regarded as reliable methods. Based on Bayesian method and maximum likelihood estimation, “transition analysis (TA)” created by Jesper Boldsen et al. could eliminate the harmful effect mentioned above. By ADBOU, the practice of TA on the skeleton sample of the pre-Qin period from Shanxi reveled the different age-at-death distributions produced by traditional morphological observational method and TA. The difference of the results of age estimation would affect paleodemographic research notably so it is necessary to adopt TA, and more efforts on improving the estimation of skeleton’s age should be made.