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The Nature of Sample Extrinsic Factors There are four extrinsic factors whihc act on the dead population that are independent of any of the biological features of the population. They all tend to reduce the size of the sample so that the final number of individuals (or skeletons) available for study is smaller, and most likely very much smaller, than the original. 1) the proportion of those dying who are buried at the sites being studied burial assemblage is a social or cultural sample, not biological 2) the proportion of those buried who survive to discovery burials to fragile to excavate, packing, washing, despatch Intrinsic Factors Assessment of age and sex is also no easy task either. Expand Time Scale In reference to time, a problem with researching dead populations is that the sample may actually represent many hundreds of years. Even with good archaeological phasing to divide the population, a hundred or two years is about as short an interval as is likely to be achieved. This has the overall effect of smoothing out or even overly expressing differences within and between groups. There is no \ia priori\i means of knowing whether the prevalence rate of a trait is higher or lower than its "real" value and so no way to correct the observed rate.
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