Implications of the Spanish Colonization in the Evolution of Dental Morphological Structure in Maya Populations from Yucatan

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Approaches to Cultural and Biological Complexity in Mexico at the Time of Spanish Conquest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Dental morphology among the Prehispanic Maya population has been characterized by a certain degree of stability. Isolation-by-distance models do not fit well into Mesoamerican populations, due to a relatively homogeneous dental structure. This was true also in the Yucatan peninsula, despite the fact that it did not represent a region of passage of migratory waves. Population movement and dynamics were fairly intense as a consequence of trade and political relationships. However, the entry of foreigners from different parts of the world since the Spanish colonization has slowly led to changes in the morphological structure of the dentition. Here, data on dental morphology and anatomical variants from Prehispanic, colonial and modern populations from the northern Lowlands are presented. Prehispanic collections are representative of local people; the colonial sample shows the presence of non-locals from the Old World. The modern collections are from individuals of Maya origins, so they provide the direct evidence of the effect of admixture on dental morphology. Results indicate a chronologically-related distribution, witnessing the morphological and orthodontic changes that characterize the modern population; yet only few traits seem to clearly discriminate groups, among which stand shovel shape, microdontia and cusp number of mandibular first molars.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Approaches to Cultural and Biological Complexity in Mexico at the Time of Spanish Conquest

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23273