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| Author(s): |
Ligia Benedetto Giardini Bartolomucci
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Master's Dissertation |
| Press: | São Paulo. |
| Institution: | Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Biociências (IBIOC/SB) |
| Defense date: | 2006-04-26 |
| Examining board members: |
Sabine Eggers;
Dione da Rocha Bandeira;
Regina Celia Mingroni Netto
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| Advisor: | Sabine Eggers |
| Abstract | |
Archaeological studies of fluvial shellmounds have shown cultural similarities between them and their counterparts on the coast. However, there are only a few reports on the biological affinities and the microevolutionary processes regarding those shellmound dwellers, mainly because human remains regarding these fluvial sites are recent advents in Brazilian archaeology. In order to shed light on this important aspect of Brazilian biological anthropology, the aim of the present thesis is to estimate the biodistance between osteological collections originating from fluvial as well as coastal shellmounds using 33 non-metric dental traits. Dental non-metric traits are genetically determined and rarely are influenced by environmental factors. Furthermore, they preserve very well in the archaeological record and are easily evaluated. Thus, dental traits constitute valuable markers for biodistance studies. For the present work we observed dental traits in 1958 dental crowns and in 3260 dental roots from 239 individuals coming from four fluvial shellmounds from the Vale do Ribeira (Capelinha, Estreito, Moraes, Pavão XVI) e seven coastal sites from the states of Paraná and Santa Catarina (Enseada I, Guaraguaçu, Itaquara, Jabuticabeira II, Matinhos, Morro do Ouro e Rio Comprido). The analyses were carried out according to three different groupings: 1) each site was compared to all others separately 2) the sites were classified into four different regions (São Paulo, Paraná, Northern Santa Catarina and Southern Santa Catarina) and then compared; 3) The region São Paulo, containing the fluvial sites of the Vale do Ribeira was maintained, and this region was compared to each of the remaining sites separately. This approach allowed discussing the biodistance between the groups with more detail and control. Different tests of estimating biodistance were used: the Mean Measure of Divergence (MMD) according to two distinct formulae, the Sanghvi test, the Multidimensional Scaling and, finally, the cluster analysis. Most of the results indicate that the individuals from the fluvial shellmound Moraes lie in the range of variability observed for the coastal sites studied here, however, they are biological more similar in respect to the individuals from the sites of the region Paraná. Archaeologically these two regions are quite different. This calls for further studies. On the other hand, there are some significant morphological differences between the coastal sites, corroborating former results of archaeological as well as bioanthropological reports. The different methods used in the present study show some divergent results. Their implications are discussed. To better comprehend the biological relation between fluvial shellmound dwellers and groups from coastal as well as interior sites, further work is necessary, especially including a greater number of individuals as well as sites. Only then it is possible to know if the fluvial shellmounds maintain their position in the range of variability encountered for the coastal sites or not. (AU) | |