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This study assesses whether greater levels of physical activity result in increased rates of degenerative change in the pubic symphysis and the iliac auricular surface. The sample comprises 131 skeletons from the Athens Collection. Skeletal age‐at‐death was estimated from the pubic symphysis and the iliac auricular surface. Skeletal activity was assessed using femoral cross‐sectional geometric (CSG) properties and fibrocartilaginous entheses. The association between skeletal age stages, CSG properties and entheseal changes (EC) was tested using Spearman correlation followed with partial Spearman correlation controlling for the effect of documented age‐at‐death and estimated body mass, as well as generalised linear models. Moreover, Kruskal–Wallis tests were used to compare the EC and CSG values among individuals who were underaged, correctly aged and overaged using the pubic symphysis and the iliac auricular surface. Our results show a negative correlation of skeletal age stages with particular CSG properties, implying a decrease in skeletal rigidity as age increases, and a positive correlation with EC scores, suggesting that older individuals exhibit more pronounced EC. Controlling for documented age‐at‐death and body mass produced low correlation coefficients and very few statistically significant results. The difference in EC and CSG values among underaged, correctly aged and overaged individuals was significant only for ECs in individuals over 50 years old. The present study highlights that the effect of activity on pelvic age markers is not pronounced, because a limited association between activity and skeletal degeneration in the pubic symphysis and iliac auricular surface was found. Considering the difficulty in identifying past occupations skeletally, our study supports that this often missing parameter in past osteobiographies does not affect skeletal age estimation. Moreover, our results suggest that taking into account the EC scores when evaluating skeletal age can provide further insights in age‐at‐death estimation in older individuals.

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The current article explores the aging effects on the overall morphology of the endplates of the 12th thoracic vertebra (T12), while screening for sex differences. It further evaluates the suitability of T12 for estimating age-at-death in bioarcheaological contexts. We captured the morphology of the vertebral endplates, including the formation of osteophytes, in a novel continuous quantitative manner using digital photography. 168 Greek adults from the Athens Collection were used for modeling the aging effects and another 107 individuals from two Danish archaeological assemblages for evaluation. Regression analysis is based on generalized additive models for correlating age-at-death and morphological variation. Our proposed measurement method is highly reliable (R>0.98) and the main differences observed between sexes are size related. Aging has considerable effect on the endplate morphology of the T12 with the total area of the endplate, the area of the epiphyseal rim, and the shape irregularities of the endplate's external boundary being mostly affected. Multivariate regression shows that aging effects account up to 46% of the observed variation, although with differential expression between sexes. Correct age prediction on archaeological remains reached 33% with a prominent tendency for overestimation. The morphology of the T12 endplates is influenced by age and it can provide some insight with respect to the age-at-death of unidentified individuals, especially when other skeletal age markers are unavailable. Our proposed method provides an ageestimation framework for bioarchaeological settings, especially for estimating broader age ranges, such as discriminating between young and old adults.

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