A reappraisal of cranial shape among prehistoric South Americans and its implications for the peopling of the New World

Summary

Recent studies of South American populations have played an integral role in elucidating the timing, origin and migration routes of the first Americans. Much attention has centered on the cranial shape of these prehistoric populations, which some researchers have described as having two distinct head forms. The cranial shape of early Holocene Paleoamericans has been categorized as dolichocephalic (long-headed), while later populations have been generally described as brachycephalic (round-headed). These differences have been used to infer multiple origin models, some of which propose that the dolichocephalic population was biologically distinct and later replaced by brachycephalic individuals. However, some recent genetic studies suggest that prehistoric South Americans all share a common ancestral origin. Given the incongruity between genetic and cranial data, we test the hypothesis that Holocene populations consist of two skull morphologies that coincide with the early and late Holocene periods. Using 3D models, we computed cranial indices of 95 individuals from western South America that date to the early, middle, and late Holocene. Our findings support genetic data and show that many crania have an intermediate shape, with no clear transition from dolichocephaly to brachycephaly. Instead, South American crania show a range of variation throughout the Holocene.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

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