Cementochronology: A solution to assess mortality profiles from individual age-at-death estimates

Taphonomy mainly explains the underestimation in elderly individuals. Although some issues remain to be addressedin order to properly implement the method and improve reliability, cementochronology makes a major contribution to palaeodemography, as it provides relatively reliable mortality profiles with a precision never attained before, thus offering new prospects for studying the mortality of past populations.