abstract 9505398 Early This project involves a demographic anthropologist at Florida Atlantic University in a study of the population dynamics of a small group of Venezuelan Indians, the Yanomami. The project will code and analyze a unique data set of over 20 small Indian communities covering periods of 20-50 years. The researchers will develop demographic profiles for each community for the duration of its existence, estimating rates of fertility, mortality, migration. The researchers will develop a population profile of this group as it developed from first contact with non-Indian societies through settlement at religious missions. The data will be immensely valuable to demographic researcher to explore such questions as the relation between imbalanced sex ratios due to precontact warfare, small group size random variation, disease, female infanticide, and polygyny, and the overall fertility structure of the population. This research is important because it will provide a valuable data resource for studies of small-group population dynamics. Such studies can provide insight into the history of the human population in general.
