Craniofacial and mandibular variation in colonial populations of the southern Andes during the 16th to 19th centuries

MENENDEZ LUMILA PAULA; MANSEGOSA DANIELA A.; GIANNOTTI SEBASTIÁN

HOMO-Jounal of comparative Human Biology

Editorial científica Schweizerbart

Lugar: Germany; Año: 2020 vol. 71 p. 317 - 329

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the morphological variation of human populations that inhabited the southern Andes (Mendoza city, Argentina) during 16th to 19th centuries. That period represents an encounter of several distinctive populations inhabiting the same area: Europeans, descendants from Europeans (criollos), Africans, and Native Americans. In this paper, we study the shape changes of the cranial base, cranial vault, facial skeleton, and mandible toevaluate if the craniofacial variation differs in relation to the colonial periods and burial areas. For this, we analyzed 44 skulls from four colonial temples of the Foundational Area of Mendoza, and 36 prehistoric ones as a comparative sample.A total of 84 3D anatomical landmarks were registered with a Microscribe G2X. First, we explored the morphological changes by chronological period through a Principal Component Analysis, and then we calculated Mahalanobis distancesamong the individuals from different chronological periods. Second, we evaluated the morphological variation of the colonial subsample according to chronological period, archaeological site, and burial area. For this, we conducted a PrincipalComponent Analysis and a MANOVA. We represent the morphological changes by Wireframes that show the main variation along PC1 and PC2. The results obtained showed morphological differences in the cranial base and facial skeleton ofthe individuals from different chronological periods, while the cranial base and mandible vary when comparing individuals from different burial areas. We conclude that the colonial society was highly diverse in terms of biological and culturalvariation, and that there were differential dietary patterns among them.