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The Past Population of Britain: An Archaeological Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 August 2014

D. F. Renn
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Extract

Conjectural estimates of the early population of Britain are subject to wide margins of error. Professor Grahame Clark (1957) has put forward tentative figures of early prehistoric numbers, based upon the native population density in newly colonized lands. The Upper Palaeolithic population density of Britain was compared to that of Alaska in 1867 and the North-West Territories in 1911, and the Mesolithic to that of Tasmania. Since prehistory has no specific dates, being measured in periods of hundreds or even thousands of years, overall numbers must be similarly imprecise in date. Again, the colonial figures themselves are only estimates (the two Palaeolithic estimators being in the ratio 20:3), so that the estimates of prehistoric population might not even be of the correct order of magnitude.

Estimates of between a half and one and a half million have been made for the population of Roman Britain in the second century A.D., based upon different interpretations of the evidence for population density of town and country (Wheeler, 1930). Here we have agreement on the order of magnitude, but the estimates are still imprecise in date and size.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Staple Inn Actuarial Society , Volume 15 , Issue 6 , March 1960 , pp. 445 - 454
Copyright
Copyright © Institute of Actuaries Students' Society 1960

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References

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