Traces of certainty: Recording death and taxes in fifteenth-century Tuscany

Official statistics reflect the presuppositions and theories of the societi es that they represent. Results derived from data contained in a set of tax declarations from fifteenth-century rural Tuscany show that deaths of male s eligible for the head tax were reported more often than deaths of other f amily members, because these reports lowered households' tax assessments. T he results also show that heads of households were overrepresented among de ad males, most likely because tax officials used the names of heads of hous eholds to organize the tax rolls. This reliance on the head of the househol d in data collection-a common technique in contemporary and historical cens uses-may produce results that overrepresent heads of households.