Poster presentado en: 100+25 years of Homo erectus: Dmanisi and beyond. International Senckenberg... more Poster presentado en: 100+25 years of Homo erectus: Dmanisi and beyond. International Senckenberg Conference: Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, 20-24 september, 2016
The biological life history of infants from archaeological contexts can provide a unique insight ... more The biological life history of infants from archaeological contexts can provide a unique insight into past human populations. Dental mineralized tissues contain a permanent record of their growth that can provide access to the prenatal and early infant life, and mortality, of human skeletons. This study focuses on the histomorphometric analysis of deciduous teeth from the ‘Archaic Necropolis’ of Motya (7th–6th century BCE, Sicily–Italy). The histomorphometric analysis is conducted on prenatal and postnatal enamel of eight anterior deciduous teeth from seven individuals from this Phoenician population to estimate their chronological age-at-death, health, and enamel growth parameters. Proteomic analysis has been used to determine the sex of the infants. The presence of the Neonatal Line in all specimens indicates that the seven individuals survived birth. The occurrence of at least one Accentuated Line in prenatal enamel in four out of seven individuals suggests the foetuses and/or their mothers experienced a stress-related event during pregnancy. As expected, there was limited variation in Daily Secretion Rates near the Enamel Dentine Junction. These rates increase toward the outer enamel surface and decrease toward the cervix. Our findings illustrate the importance of dental histology for reconstructing perinatal and early infancy mortality and morbidity patterns at Motya, which sheds light on the socio-cultural perception of new-borns and infants in an ancient Phoenician community.
The archaeological site of Salorno-Dos de la Forca (Bozen, Alto Adige) provides one of the rarest... more The archaeological site of Salorno-Dos de la Forca (Bozen, Alto Adige) provides one of the rarest and most significant documentations of cremated human remains preserved from an ancient cremation platform (ustrinum). The pyre area, located along the upper Adige valley, is dated to the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1150-950 BCE) and has yielded an unprecedented quantity of cremated human remains (about 63.5 kg), along with burnt animal bone fragments, shards of pottery, and other grave goods made in bronze and animal bone/antler. This study focuses on the bioanthropological analysis of the human remains and discusses the formation of the unusual burnt deposits at Salorno through comparisons with modern practices and protohistoric and contemporaneous archaeological deposits. The patterning of bone fragmentation and commingling was investigated using spatial data recorded during excavation which, along with the bioanthropological and archaeological data, are used to model and test two hypotheses: Salorno-Dos de la Forca would be the result of A) repeated primary cremations left in situ; or B) of residual material remaining after select elements were removed for internment in urns or burials to unknown depositional sites. By modelling bone weight and demographic data borrowed from regional affine contexts, the authors suggest that this cremation site may have been used over several generations by a small community-perhaps a local elite. With a quantity of human remains that exceeds that of any other coeval contexts interpreted as ustrina, Salorno may be the product of a complex series of rituals in which the human cremains did not receive individual burial, but were left in situ, in a collective/communal place of primary combustion, defining an area of repeated funeral ceremonies involving offerings and libations across a few generations. This would represent a new typological and functional category that adds to the variability of mortuary customs at the end of the Bronze Age in the
The Iron Age was a dynamic period in central Mediterranean history, with the expansion of Greek a... more The Iron Age was a dynamic period in central Mediterranean history, with the expansion of Greek and Phoenician colonies and the growth of Carthage into the dominant maritime power of the Mediterranean. These events were facilitated by the ease of long-distance travel following major advances in seafaring. We know from the archaeological record that trade goods and materials were moving across great distances in unprecedented quantities, but it is unclear how these patterns correlate with human mobility. To investigate population mobility and interactions directly, we sequenced the genomes of 30 ancient individuals from coastal cities around the central Mediterranean, in Tunisia, Sardinia, and central Italy. We observe a meaningful contribution of autochthonous populations, as well as highly heterogeneous ancestry including many individuals with non-local ancestries from other parts of the Mediterranean region. These results highlight both the role of local populations and the extrem...
Beauchesne, P., Agarwal, SC., Kinkopf, K., Trombley, T., Goodson, C., Fentress, L., Coppa, A., Ca... more Beauchesne, P., Agarwal, SC., Kinkopf, K., Trombley, T., Goodson, C., Fentress, L., Coppa, A., Candilio, F., 2016. Examining childhood stress through vertebral neural canal size : implications for the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease hypothesis. 85th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, Atlanta, April 12-16, 2016. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 159 (S62): 89. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/10968644/2016/159/S62
Poster presentado en: 100+25 years of Homo erectus: Dmanisi and beyond. International Senckenberg... more Poster presentado en: 100+25 years of Homo erectus: Dmanisi and beyond. International Senckenberg Conference: Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, 20-24 september, 2016
Alessia Nava, Luca Bondioli, Alfredo Coppa, Diego Dreossi, Luciano Fattore, Lucia Mancini&Clément... more Alessia Nava, Luca Bondioli, Alfredo Coppa, Diego Dreossi, Luciano Fattore, Lucia Mancini&Clément Zanolli Dipartimento di Biologia Ambientale, Università di Roma ‘La Sapienza’, Rome, Italy 2 Museo delle Civiltà. Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico ‘L. Pigorini’, Sezione di Bioarcheologia, Rome, Italy 3 Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste S.C.p.A., Basovizza (Trieste), Italy 4 Dipartimento Ingegneria Chimica Materiali Ambiente, Università di Roma ‘La Sapienza’, Rome, Italy Laboratoire AMIS, UMR 5288, Université Toulouse III, Toulouse, France
HAL is a multidisciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific re... more HAL is a multidisciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike| 4.0 International License
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2021
Modern humans have a slow and extended period of childhood growth, but to what extent this ontoge... more Modern humans have a slow and extended period of childhood growth, but to what extent this ontogenetic pathway was present in Neanderthals is debated. Dental development, linked to the duration of somatic growth across modern primates, is the main source for information about growth and development in a variety of fossil primates, including humans. Studies of Neanderthal permanent teeth report a pace of development either similar to recent humans or relatively accelerated. Neanderthal milk teeth, which form and emerge before permanent teeth, provide an opportunity to determine which pattern was present at birth. Here we present a comparative study of the prenatal and early postnatal growth of five milk teeth from three Neanderthals (120 000–130 000 years ago) using virtual histology. Results reveal regions of their milk teeth formed quickly before birth and over a relatively short period of time after birth. Tooth emergence commenced towards the earliest end of the eruption schedule...
A wide number of factors can affect the structure of the bones in the foot. In bioarchaeology, fe... more A wide number of factors can affect the structure of the bones in the foot. In bioarchaeology, few studies about foot anomalies include population comparisons and changes across time. We aimed to identify normal and pathological variability that affected the foot in the recent history of West Mediterranean populations. Thus, we analyzed change in occurrence of rare variants, pathological lesions, entheseal morphology, and their probable causes. We studied 518 pairs of skeletonized feet dated from the 2nd-20th centuries CE, from Catalonia (Spain) and the region of Lazio (Italy). Moreover, a Neolithic series from Oman has been analyzed for contrast. We found that calcaneal spur, hypertrophic peroneal trochlea of calcaneus, periosteal reaction of talar neck, alteration of articular surface to lateral cuneiform, displaced talar neck to medial plane, osteophytes in cuneiform-navicular joint, fused phalanges, and forefoot eburnation showed significant differences among countries. Contrasting by countries and dates, we noticed an increase in the frequencies of these variables from Spain over the centuries. Conversely, there are no temporal differences among the Italian series. The period encompassing the 10th-19th centuries CE demonstrated the highest differences between countries. Lifestyle, occupations, footwear, and geography could be the origin of variability.
This paper provides results from a suite of analyses made on human dental material from the Late ... more This paper provides results from a suite of analyses made on human dental material from the Late Palaeolithic to Neolithic strata of the cave site of Grotta Continenza situated in the Fucino Basin of the Abruzzo region of central Italy. The available human remains from this site provide a unique possibility to study ways in which forager versus farmer lifeways affected human odonto-skeletal remains. The main aim of our study is to understand palaeodietary patterns and their changes over time as reflected in teeth. These analyses involve a review of metrics and oral pathologies, micro-fossils preserved in the mineralized dental plaque, macrowear, and buccal microwear. Our results suggest that these complementary approaches support the assumption about a critical change in dental conditions and status with the introduction of Neolithic foodstuff and habits. However, we warn that different methodologies applied here provide data at different scales of resolution for detecting such chan...
Ancient human movements through AsiaAncient DNA has allowed us to begin tracing the history of hu... more Ancient human movements through AsiaAncient DNA has allowed us to begin tracing the history of human movements across the globe. Narasimhanet al.identify a complex pattern of human migrations and admixture events in South and Central Asia by performing genetic analysis of more than 500 people who lived over the past 8000 years (see the Perspective by Schaefer and Shapiro). They establish key phases in the population prehistory of Eurasia, including the spread of farming peoples from the Near East, with movements both westward and eastward. The people known as the Yamnaya in the Bronze Age also moved both westward and eastward from a focal area located north of the Black Sea. The overall patterns of genetic clines reflect similar and parallel patterns in South Asia and Europe.Science, this issue p.eaat7487; see also p.981
ObjectivesBioarchaeological investigations of sex‐based differences in the prevalence of dental p... more ObjectivesBioarchaeological investigations of sex‐based differences in the prevalence of dental pathological lesions, particularly caries, have drawn considerable attention, and out of this work, two dominant models have emerged. Traditionally, the first model interprets sex‐related patterns in caries as a product of gendered differences in diet. A more recent model interprets a generally higher propensity for caries prevalence in females in light of reproductive ecology. To test the hypothesis that females have higher risk of caries in accordance with reproductive ecology, we examined and analyzed caries prevalence and other potentially synergistic oral pathological lesions in a late medieval (A.D. 1300–1500) Italian archaeological sample.Materials and methodsWe examined sex‐ and age‐related prevalence in caries and other oral pathological lesions in a late medieval Italian skeletal assemblage excavated from Villamagna consisting of 38 females and 37 males (n = 1,534 teeth). We exa...
Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d'Anthropologie de Paris, 2016
Les pratiques funéraires au début du Néolithique en Méditerranée nord-occidentale ont longtemps é... more Les pratiques funéraires au début du Néolithique en Méditerranée nord-occidentale ont longtemps été considérées comme une question réglée. Elles seraient caractérisées par une grande homogénéité et une norme funéraire : le défunt serait systématiquement inhumé en dépôt primaire individuel, dans une « simple » fosse, en position fléchie sur le côté, sans ou avec peu de mobilier d'accompagnement. Une analyse archéothanatologique mise en œuvre sur la quasi-totalité des collections ostéologiques et de la documentation de terrain disponibles en France méridionale et en Italie a révélé au contraire une multiplicité de gestes funéraires. Le choix a été ici de se focaliser sur les sépultures ayant accueilli un dépôt primaire individuel, car elles sont considérées classiquement comme étant la norme, en abordant plus spécifiquement la question de leur aménagement. L'objectif est de présenter les résultats d'une série d'analyses taphonomiques, dont la majorité des sépultures n&...
Abstract Bioarchaeological studies on population dynamics in the pre-Inca Osmore Valley (Peru) ha... more Abstract Bioarchaeological studies on population dynamics in the pre-Inca Osmore Valley (Peru) have shown a level of biological affinity between colonies in the valley (Chen Chen) and the people in the Tiwanaku state, suggesting the Tiwanaku expansion brought about the foundation of two colonies and settlements in the Central Osmore Valley (Chen Chen) and perhaps along the coast where, according to some theories, they may have given rise to the Chiribaya. Conversely, archaeological data suggest an absence of cultural contact between the Tiwanaku and the Wari outposts in the Upper Valley. The present study investigates 46 dental nonmetric traits in seven pre-Inca groups to provide a geographically expanded view by comparing sites from the coastal region and the Upper Osmore Valley with groups representing the Wari and Moche cultures. Multivariate statistical analyses indicate that the Tiwanaku colony of Chen Chen shows affinity with the Wari and Moche samples, but not with the later coastal Chiribaya collection. Despite the lack of a true Tiwanaku comparative sample, this evidence suggests a biological interaction between ethnically diverse groups in the region. However caution must be taken with any final interpretation.
Poster presentado en: 100+25 years of Homo erectus: Dmanisi and beyond. International Senckenberg... more Poster presentado en: 100+25 years of Homo erectus: Dmanisi and beyond. International Senckenberg Conference: Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, 20-24 september, 2016
The biological life history of infants from archaeological contexts can provide a unique insight ... more The biological life history of infants from archaeological contexts can provide a unique insight into past human populations. Dental mineralized tissues contain a permanent record of their growth that can provide access to the prenatal and early infant life, and mortality, of human skeletons. This study focuses on the histomorphometric analysis of deciduous teeth from the ‘Archaic Necropolis’ of Motya (7th–6th century BCE, Sicily–Italy). The histomorphometric analysis is conducted on prenatal and postnatal enamel of eight anterior deciduous teeth from seven individuals from this Phoenician population to estimate their chronological age-at-death, health, and enamel growth parameters. Proteomic analysis has been used to determine the sex of the infants. The presence of the Neonatal Line in all specimens indicates that the seven individuals survived birth. The occurrence of at least one Accentuated Line in prenatal enamel in four out of seven individuals suggests the foetuses and/or their mothers experienced a stress-related event during pregnancy. As expected, there was limited variation in Daily Secretion Rates near the Enamel Dentine Junction. These rates increase toward the outer enamel surface and decrease toward the cervix. Our findings illustrate the importance of dental histology for reconstructing perinatal and early infancy mortality and morbidity patterns at Motya, which sheds light on the socio-cultural perception of new-borns and infants in an ancient Phoenician community.
The archaeological site of Salorno-Dos de la Forca (Bozen, Alto Adige) provides one of the rarest... more The archaeological site of Salorno-Dos de la Forca (Bozen, Alto Adige) provides one of the rarest and most significant documentations of cremated human remains preserved from an ancient cremation platform (ustrinum). The pyre area, located along the upper Adige valley, is dated to the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1150-950 BCE) and has yielded an unprecedented quantity of cremated human remains (about 63.5 kg), along with burnt animal bone fragments, shards of pottery, and other grave goods made in bronze and animal bone/antler. This study focuses on the bioanthropological analysis of the human remains and discusses the formation of the unusual burnt deposits at Salorno through comparisons with modern practices and protohistoric and contemporaneous archaeological deposits. The patterning of bone fragmentation and commingling was investigated using spatial data recorded during excavation which, along with the bioanthropological and archaeological data, are used to model and test two hypotheses: Salorno-Dos de la Forca would be the result of A) repeated primary cremations left in situ; or B) of residual material remaining after select elements were removed for internment in urns or burials to unknown depositional sites. By modelling bone weight and demographic data borrowed from regional affine contexts, the authors suggest that this cremation site may have been used over several generations by a small community-perhaps a local elite. With a quantity of human remains that exceeds that of any other coeval contexts interpreted as ustrina, Salorno may be the product of a complex series of rituals in which the human cremains did not receive individual burial, but were left in situ, in a collective/communal place of primary combustion, defining an area of repeated funeral ceremonies involving offerings and libations across a few generations. This would represent a new typological and functional category that adds to the variability of mortuary customs at the end of the Bronze Age in the
The Iron Age was a dynamic period in central Mediterranean history, with the expansion of Greek a... more The Iron Age was a dynamic period in central Mediterranean history, with the expansion of Greek and Phoenician colonies and the growth of Carthage into the dominant maritime power of the Mediterranean. These events were facilitated by the ease of long-distance travel following major advances in seafaring. We know from the archaeological record that trade goods and materials were moving across great distances in unprecedented quantities, but it is unclear how these patterns correlate with human mobility. To investigate population mobility and interactions directly, we sequenced the genomes of 30 ancient individuals from coastal cities around the central Mediterranean, in Tunisia, Sardinia, and central Italy. We observe a meaningful contribution of autochthonous populations, as well as highly heterogeneous ancestry including many individuals with non-local ancestries from other parts of the Mediterranean region. These results highlight both the role of local populations and the extrem...
Beauchesne, P., Agarwal, SC., Kinkopf, K., Trombley, T., Goodson, C., Fentress, L., Coppa, A., Ca... more Beauchesne, P., Agarwal, SC., Kinkopf, K., Trombley, T., Goodson, C., Fentress, L., Coppa, A., Candilio, F., 2016. Examining childhood stress through vertebral neural canal size : implications for the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease hypothesis. 85th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, Atlanta, April 12-16, 2016. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 159 (S62): 89. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/10968644/2016/159/S62
Poster presentado en: 100+25 years of Homo erectus: Dmanisi and beyond. International Senckenberg... more Poster presentado en: 100+25 years of Homo erectus: Dmanisi and beyond. International Senckenberg Conference: Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, 20-24 september, 2016
Alessia Nava, Luca Bondioli, Alfredo Coppa, Diego Dreossi, Luciano Fattore, Lucia Mancini&Clément... more Alessia Nava, Luca Bondioli, Alfredo Coppa, Diego Dreossi, Luciano Fattore, Lucia Mancini&Clément Zanolli Dipartimento di Biologia Ambientale, Università di Roma ‘La Sapienza’, Rome, Italy 2 Museo delle Civiltà. Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico ‘L. Pigorini’, Sezione di Bioarcheologia, Rome, Italy 3 Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste S.C.p.A., Basovizza (Trieste), Italy 4 Dipartimento Ingegneria Chimica Materiali Ambiente, Università di Roma ‘La Sapienza’, Rome, Italy Laboratoire AMIS, UMR 5288, Université Toulouse III, Toulouse, France
HAL is a multidisciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific re... more HAL is a multidisciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike| 4.0 International License
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2021
Modern humans have a slow and extended period of childhood growth, but to what extent this ontoge... more Modern humans have a slow and extended period of childhood growth, but to what extent this ontogenetic pathway was present in Neanderthals is debated. Dental development, linked to the duration of somatic growth across modern primates, is the main source for information about growth and development in a variety of fossil primates, including humans. Studies of Neanderthal permanent teeth report a pace of development either similar to recent humans or relatively accelerated. Neanderthal milk teeth, which form and emerge before permanent teeth, provide an opportunity to determine which pattern was present at birth. Here we present a comparative study of the prenatal and early postnatal growth of five milk teeth from three Neanderthals (120 000–130 000 years ago) using virtual histology. Results reveal regions of their milk teeth formed quickly before birth and over a relatively short period of time after birth. Tooth emergence commenced towards the earliest end of the eruption schedule...
A wide number of factors can affect the structure of the bones in the foot. In bioarchaeology, fe... more A wide number of factors can affect the structure of the bones in the foot. In bioarchaeology, few studies about foot anomalies include population comparisons and changes across time. We aimed to identify normal and pathological variability that affected the foot in the recent history of West Mediterranean populations. Thus, we analyzed change in occurrence of rare variants, pathological lesions, entheseal morphology, and their probable causes. We studied 518 pairs of skeletonized feet dated from the 2nd-20th centuries CE, from Catalonia (Spain) and the region of Lazio (Italy). Moreover, a Neolithic series from Oman has been analyzed for contrast. We found that calcaneal spur, hypertrophic peroneal trochlea of calcaneus, periosteal reaction of talar neck, alteration of articular surface to lateral cuneiform, displaced talar neck to medial plane, osteophytes in cuneiform-navicular joint, fused phalanges, and forefoot eburnation showed significant differences among countries. Contrasting by countries and dates, we noticed an increase in the frequencies of these variables from Spain over the centuries. Conversely, there are no temporal differences among the Italian series. The period encompassing the 10th-19th centuries CE demonstrated the highest differences between countries. Lifestyle, occupations, footwear, and geography could be the origin of variability.
This paper provides results from a suite of analyses made on human dental material from the Late ... more This paper provides results from a suite of analyses made on human dental material from the Late Palaeolithic to Neolithic strata of the cave site of Grotta Continenza situated in the Fucino Basin of the Abruzzo region of central Italy. The available human remains from this site provide a unique possibility to study ways in which forager versus farmer lifeways affected human odonto-skeletal remains. The main aim of our study is to understand palaeodietary patterns and their changes over time as reflected in teeth. These analyses involve a review of metrics and oral pathologies, micro-fossils preserved in the mineralized dental plaque, macrowear, and buccal microwear. Our results suggest that these complementary approaches support the assumption about a critical change in dental conditions and status with the introduction of Neolithic foodstuff and habits. However, we warn that different methodologies applied here provide data at different scales of resolution for detecting such chan...
Ancient human movements through AsiaAncient DNA has allowed us to begin tracing the history of hu... more Ancient human movements through AsiaAncient DNA has allowed us to begin tracing the history of human movements across the globe. Narasimhanet al.identify a complex pattern of human migrations and admixture events in South and Central Asia by performing genetic analysis of more than 500 people who lived over the past 8000 years (see the Perspective by Schaefer and Shapiro). They establish key phases in the population prehistory of Eurasia, including the spread of farming peoples from the Near East, with movements both westward and eastward. The people known as the Yamnaya in the Bronze Age also moved both westward and eastward from a focal area located north of the Black Sea. The overall patterns of genetic clines reflect similar and parallel patterns in South Asia and Europe.Science, this issue p.eaat7487; see also p.981
ObjectivesBioarchaeological investigations of sex‐based differences in the prevalence of dental p... more ObjectivesBioarchaeological investigations of sex‐based differences in the prevalence of dental pathological lesions, particularly caries, have drawn considerable attention, and out of this work, two dominant models have emerged. Traditionally, the first model interprets sex‐related patterns in caries as a product of gendered differences in diet. A more recent model interprets a generally higher propensity for caries prevalence in females in light of reproductive ecology. To test the hypothesis that females have higher risk of caries in accordance with reproductive ecology, we examined and analyzed caries prevalence and other potentially synergistic oral pathological lesions in a late medieval (A.D. 1300–1500) Italian archaeological sample.Materials and methodsWe examined sex‐ and age‐related prevalence in caries and other oral pathological lesions in a late medieval Italian skeletal assemblage excavated from Villamagna consisting of 38 females and 37 males (n = 1,534 teeth). We exa...
Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d'Anthropologie de Paris, 2016
Les pratiques funéraires au début du Néolithique en Méditerranée nord-occidentale ont longtemps é... more Les pratiques funéraires au début du Néolithique en Méditerranée nord-occidentale ont longtemps été considérées comme une question réglée. Elles seraient caractérisées par une grande homogénéité et une norme funéraire : le défunt serait systématiquement inhumé en dépôt primaire individuel, dans une « simple » fosse, en position fléchie sur le côté, sans ou avec peu de mobilier d'accompagnement. Une analyse archéothanatologique mise en œuvre sur la quasi-totalité des collections ostéologiques et de la documentation de terrain disponibles en France méridionale et en Italie a révélé au contraire une multiplicité de gestes funéraires. Le choix a été ici de se focaliser sur les sépultures ayant accueilli un dépôt primaire individuel, car elles sont considérées classiquement comme étant la norme, en abordant plus spécifiquement la question de leur aménagement. L'objectif est de présenter les résultats d'une série d'analyses taphonomiques, dont la majorité des sépultures n&...
Abstract Bioarchaeological studies on population dynamics in the pre-Inca Osmore Valley (Peru) ha... more Abstract Bioarchaeological studies on population dynamics in the pre-Inca Osmore Valley (Peru) have shown a level of biological affinity between colonies in the valley (Chen Chen) and the people in the Tiwanaku state, suggesting the Tiwanaku expansion brought about the foundation of two colonies and settlements in the Central Osmore Valley (Chen Chen) and perhaps along the coast where, according to some theories, they may have given rise to the Chiribaya. Conversely, archaeological data suggest an absence of cultural contact between the Tiwanaku and the Wari outposts in the Upper Valley. The present study investigates 46 dental nonmetric traits in seven pre-Inca groups to provide a geographically expanded view by comparing sites from the coastal region and the Upper Osmore Valley with groups representing the Wari and Moche cultures. Multivariate statistical analyses indicate that the Tiwanaku colony of Chen Chen shows affinity with the Wari and Moche samples, but not with the later coastal Chiribaya collection. Despite the lack of a true Tiwanaku comparative sample, this evidence suggests a biological interaction between ethnically diverse groups in the region. However caution must be taken with any final interpretation.
Uploads
Papers by Alfredo Coppa