About stature change,
    Stature is a ever changing feature in human populations, and is influenced
by nutrition and disease.  If an individual or population is under additional
stress such as lifeway change (agricuture, famine, endemic pathology, etc)
there will be a decrease in the growth potential for that individual or
population.
    Your discussion of heights in human populations in the historical past
may be derived from secular trend studies done using skeletal populations
from Europe or from American populations.
   One reference that comes to mind is fairly old, but may be of interest;
Huber, Neil; The problem of stature increase:Looking from the past to the
     present. in Brothwell, D. (ed) The Skeletal Biology of Earlier Human
     Populations, Pergamon Press, 1968. pp. 67-102.
 
You may also want to check the publication: Foetus into Man, by J.M. Tanner,
Harverd Univ. Press, 1978 for references to secular trends in stature as
part of the section on stature growth and development.
If you are wanting to compare to other populations and how they are affected
in growth, see:  The Measures of Man, (ed) by Eugene Giles and Jon Friedlaender
, Peabody Museum Press, 1976 for research in environmental stress, especially
pp. 230-259, 408-432, and 142-163 and 181-193.
    Other researchers in Forensic Anthropology are dealing with the aspects
of stature differences in the past century, you may want to contact Dr.
Richard Jantz at the Univ. of Tennesse concerning this.
    There should be some information available at the Census Bureau in
Washington, and/or more probably at the NIH.
 
    I hope that this has been of some help to you in your quest for this
information
Sincerely,
David R. Hunt
Dept of Anthro.
National Museum of Naturla History
Smithsonian Institution