Cranial morphological variation among Paleoamerican skeletons: a test of the coastal migration hypothesis

Summary

Although the origin of the first Americans has been resolved through genetics, the routes that early humans traveled from Asia into North and South America are still the subject of intense scholarly debate. Recent genetic and archaeological data suggest an early migration may have occurred along the Pacific coast of the Americas. Based on these lines of evidence, it is hypothesized that Paleoamericans may show morphological affinities to prehistoric skeletons from coastal sites if an early Pacific migration occurred. To test this hypothesis, I compared Paleoamerican crania (>8,000 years BP) to samples from 30 coastal and interior sites in North and South America (7,500 - 1,000 years BP). High-resolution digital models were created with a 3D surface scanner and used to record standard craniofacial landmarks. A suite of 3D geometric morphometric analyses was conducted with the coordinate data to assess similarities among the coastal and interior groups. The results indicate close affinities between nearly all Paleoamerican and coastal samples, but do not exclude the possibility of an interior migration during the initial peopling of the Americas. This research is in accordance with recent genetic, archaeological, and skeletal analyses addressing the possible migration routes and biological affinities of the first Americans.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

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