Heritable Nonmetric Traits: A Study of a Bronze Age Tomb at Tell Abraq, UAE

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This research investigates the use of heritable nonmetric traits as a means for assessing population variation and biological relatedness within an archaeological sample using the human skeletal tomb assemblage from the Bronze Age site of Tell Abraq (2100-2000BC). A total of 410 individuals representing all ages and both sexes were interred in the tomb. An analysis of 16 heritable nonmetric traits was conducted on the adult remains for both cranial and postcranial elements. Of the 8 elements analyzed, 2 elements in particular had results potentially indicating biological homogeneity in this sample. The first was the patella, with a high frequency of segmented patellae at 4.46% (7/157), compared to the lower frequency of vastus notch presence at 32.48% (51/157). The second was C1, which had a high frequency of posterior bridging of the atlas at 25% (21/84) and accessory foramen at 10.71% (9/84). Aside from these findings, the other nonmetric trait results from this study suggest that the individuals interred in this tomb exhibited limited biological variation. This study’s findings when combined with previous lines of evidence all support hypotheses that consanguineous unions were possibly a cultural practice during the late Bronze Age at Tell Abraq.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33401