HOMO - Journal of Comparative Human Biology 61 (2010) 337–358 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect HOMO - Journal of Comparative Human Biology journal homepage: www.elsevier.de/jchb Age estimation in subadult Egyptian remains S. Boccone a,∗ , M. Micheletti Cremasco b , S. Bortoluzzi a , J. Moggi-Cecchi a , E. Rabino Massa b a Laboratori di Antropologia, Dipartimento di Biologia Evoluzionistica “Leo Pardi”, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Via del Proconsolo 12, 50122 Firenze, Italy b Dipartimento di Biologia Animale e dell’Uomo, Università degli Studi di Torino, Via Accademia Albertina 13, 10123 Torino, Italy article info Article history: Received 2 February 2010 Accepted 19 May 2010 abstract In anthropological analyses of past populations, it is very important to be able to accurately reconstruct the palaeodemographic profile in order to interpret infant mortality as an indicator of the environ- mental, social and cultural conditions. There are various methods to evaluate the age of immature individuals but some of these methods are strongly influenced by the different rates of skeletal development observed in populations from various geographical areas and/or from various time periods, as well as between the sexes. Clearly, there is a need for adopting a method of estimation of age at death, which will be the one most suitable for analysing the particular skeletal sample. In this study we investigated subadults from the Egyptian oste- ological collection housed in the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the University of Turin. For each individual, the age at death was estimated based on the degree of eruption and mineralisation of the teeth. Then the estimated age at death was correlated with the measurements of the long bones and ilium. We showed that greater regularity and constancy of rates of skeletal growth could be assessed with measurements, alternative to using maximum length of diaphysis. Moreover, using alterna- tive characters, it was possible to markedly increase the number of individuals whose age at death could be estimated. Our study also showed the need to use a reference sample consistent with the sample being analysed and, which was derived from similar biological-environmental context. Therefore, our proposed method ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 0552743034; fax: +39 0552743038. E-mail address: boccones@unifi.it (S. Boccone). 0018-442X/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jchb.2010.05.003