Oaxaca and its Eastern Neighbors in Prehispanic Times: Population Movements from the Perspective of Dental Morphological Traits

Summary

The dynamic interaction among human groups in Prehispanic Mesoamerica led to population exchange and migrations that have began to be untangled from a bioarchaeological perspective. Still, little is known about the demic biological exchange between Southern Sierra Madre populations and their coeval Eastern neighbors along the isthmic and Maya corridors. The present paper focuses on dental morphology and affinities among Prehispanic settlers that inhabited the present state of Oaxaca (Mexico) during the Classic and Postclassic periods, and their relationships with coeval groups from the East. Three dental collections dated to the Classic (Monte Alban) and the Postclassic periods (Zaachila and Cerro Guacamaya) are compared with coeval collections from the Eastern territories. When the three samples are compared to Postclassic Maya ones, they cluster together, showing expected differences with the Maya coastal sites. However, when the Classic period samples are included, the collections from Oaxaca are distributed in different clusters witnessing heterogeneity within the Oaxaca region, indicating some level of morphological affinities with an isthmic sample and with Southern Lowland Maya groups, triggering broader questions regarding affinity-by-distance and population movement in Prehispanic Mesoamerica. The study has been funded by CONACyT grants CB-2010-154750 and I0010-2014-02-232831.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Bioarchaeology of Oaxaca: Talking with the Dead from Southern Mexico   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage