Dataset for: "Bayesian Reconstruction of Demographic Structures for Cremated Populations from Prehistoric Central Europe"

This repository contains eleven data and program files related to the paper "Bayesian Reconstruction of Demographic Structures for Cremated Populations from Prehistoric Central Europe" (Łukasik et al. 2026, article in progress). The code is written in Stan (https://mc-stan.org) and called from within R v. 4.2.2 (https://www.r-project.org) through the RStan package v. 2.32.6.

*****Lusatians_basic.stan : Stan code for the basic version of the model, assuming a stationary population, to be called from the main R code (Pleszew Lusatians main.R) with RStan package. 

Lusatians_children.stan : Stan code for the version of the model with the correction for the undercount of the number of children, assuming a stationary population, to be called from the main R code (Pleszew Lusatians main.R) with RStan package. 

Lusatians_stable_corr.stan : Stan code for the version of the model with the correction for the undercount of the number of children, assuming a stable population with uncertain growth rate R, to be called from the main R code (Pleszew Lusatians main.R) with RStan package. 

Lusatians_simple.stan : Stan code for a simple version of the model, with no uncertainty of age assessment taken into account, to be called from the simple R code (Pleszew Lusatians simple.R), which is kept separate due to the different structure of the data with RStan package. 

Pleszew Lusatians main.R : The main R code for estimating the three models including the uncertainty of age assessment. Requires the RStan package. 

Pleszew Lusatians simple.R : A simple R code for estimating the model without the uncertainty of age assessment, included as a sensitivity check. Requires the RStan package. 

Pleszew Lusatian key results.zip : A zip folder containing eight csv files generated by the R/Stan code, with the results for the four variants of the analysis presented in the paper (basic, with correction for the number of children, stable with correction, and simple). The files include posterior summaries (mean, sd, selected quantiles) and basic diagnostic measures (n_eff and Rhat), which indicate good model convergence (Rhat values very close to 1). 

Pleszew Lusatians visuals.R : The R code for generating the visuals presented in the paper, requires only base R.

Pleszew Lusatians Database.xlsx : An MS Excel spreadsheet with the main database of the remains and their age assessment

Pleszew Lusatians Weiss MT-20.xlsx : An auxiliaryMS Excel spreadsheet, comparing selected results with the most fitting model life tables from Weiss (1973)

Reference.txt : An input file to the Stan estimation with the mapping of the uncertai measurement categories onto age classes 

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Version 1.0 5 September 2025, metadata amended 4 May 2026. Prepared by Jakub Bijak ([e-mail])