The borders of space and time: Biological continuity at Campovalano

Summary

Territorial and cultural boundaries remain some of the most elusive and compelling areas of anthropological study. We examine biological continuity at Campovalano (Teramo, Abruzzo, Italy) to highlight ways that biology can be used to elucidate interpretations of frontiers and borderlands. We test the hypothesis that geographic location strongly influenced biological continuity in Italian history.

Eighteen cranial (n=278) and five maxillary dental (n=377) metric traits, and dental morphological (n=492) data from four groups were used in this study: Campovalano Iron Age (750-200 BC), Medieval (11th C. AD), and Recent (modern era), and Alfedena Iron Age (L’Aquila, Abruzzo, Italy; 600-400 BC).

Results of metric analyses indicate similarity between Campovalano Iron Age and Medieval samples – only interlandmark distances between bregma, lambda, and left frontotemporale differ significantly between these groups. Alfedena shows numerous differences with both Campovalano Iron Age and Medieval series, and principal component analyses of geometric group means reflect these distinctions. Neighbor joining methods of the dental morphological data suggest that Alfedena is the outgroup compared to the Campovalano Iron Age, Medieval, and Recent series.

Although the political boundaries of these neighboring groups were often in flux, their biological borders were perhaps governed by different sets of rules.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• The Bioarchaeology of Frontier and Borderlands

Keywords

Spatial Coverage