Numerous postcranial discrete characters and cranial and postcranial metric traits are compared among skeletal samples derived from four east-central Arizona Western Pueblo sites that were inhabited from the 12th through the 14th centuries A.D.: Grasshopper, Kinishba, Point of Pines, and Turkey Creek. Pearson's Lambda Criterion and discriminant analysis are used to reveal patterns of morphological variation among the four groups from which their biological relationships could be inferred. It is concluded that both discrete and metric skeletal traits should be used for biologically differentiating human skeletal series. After all traits were checked for intraobserver error, preliminary data analyses were conducted to elicit appropriate traits for differentiating the groups. Based on these analyses, it is notable that (1) the discrete traits of the postcranium used in this study are relatively independent of age, sex, robusticity, and each other, (2) craniofacial metric traits are influenced little by either occipital or lambdoidal deformation, (3) several postcranial metric traits significantly differ between younger and older adults, though this is not so for cranial metric traits, and (4) correlations among postcranial metric traits are moderate to strong; among cranial metric traits they are rather weak, and very weak among cranial and postcranial metric traits. For both metric and discrete traits, biological distance results obtained from analyses of axial and appendicular skeletal data are discordant. For the axial skeleton, excluding the mandible, the four Western Pueblo groups are relatively biologically homogeneous. For the appendicular skeleton the opposite is the case. Distance results provided by metric and discrete traits, respectively, of the axial skeleton are much more consistent than are those yielded by metric and discrete traits, respectively, of the appendicular skeleton. It is suggested that the axial skeleton, omitting the mandible, is probably less plastic than is the appendicular skeleton and is the appropriate unit of analysis in studies of biological differentiation of skeletal samples.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/184927 |
| Date | January 1982 |
| Creators | SHIPMAN, JEFFREY HYMAN. |
| Contributors | Birkby, Walter H., Stini, William A., Bleibtreu, Hermann K. |
| Publisher | The University of Arizona. |
| Source Sets | University of Arizona |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text, Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic) |
| Rights | Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. |
Page generated in 0.0018 seconds