Going the Distance: Tracking Migration through Population Structure in the Southwest US (2100 BC–AD 1680)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

People who migrate are forced to adapt, interact and re-organize themselves in dynamic ways not yet fully understood. This study tests three archaeological migration models spanning 3,500 years of agricultural village occupation in the Southwest United States (US) involving migration into uninhabited landscapes, internal frontiers, and diaspora. Following the Relethford-Blangero analytic model, phenotypic variation and biological distances are calculated based on craniofacial measurements collected from 1261 individuals. Results indicate two distinct Basketmaker II early ancestral lineages, including evidence of migration from Early Agricultural to Western Basketmaker II sub-regions. Increased settlement density pushed people into internal frontiers, leading to newly established groups experiencing gene flow, while other communities were impacted more by bottleneck effects (genetic drift). Long-distance diaspora issued forth heightened variance at both origin and destination sub-regions, such as the Kayenta and Mogollon Rim Pueblos. Migration patterns shifted when people became more geographically constrained and localized as population sizes began to decline 150 years before Hispanic contact.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23033