Human morphological diversification in the Argentinean Pampas: Implications for the Peopling of South America

• Applicant: Lumila Menéndez, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: from 2018 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 415489479

Despite consensus on South America as being the last continent to be colonized by modern humans, several aspects about the peopling of the New World remain as yet unaddressed. One such enigma concerns the evolutionary diversification processes behind the high degree of morphological diversity, including whether these resulted from multiple migration waves or local adaptive responses following a single migration into the Americas. The sparseness of relevant human skeletal samples has long hindered sufficient assessment of such competing models. More crucially, there are no studies comparing diachronic samples spanning a deep time frame from the early to the late Holocene, nor combining cranial, dental and bony labyrinth data comprehensively. The Pampean region in Central-East Argentina constitutes one of the most suitable areas for studying the peopling of South America due to the presence of numerous reliably dated human remains from the late Pleistocene to the late Holocene. Therefore, by using samples from several sites in the Argentinean Pampas, the present project aims to shed light on diachronic morphological variation. Specifically, through the analysis of ~1,200 samples from South America, currently housed in South American and European museums, the project will evaluate the role of random (e.g. genetic drift) and non-random (e.g. selection) factors in shaping the evolution of the human skeleton of the Argentinean Pampas through the Holocene. Specifically, the project points to a) Study cranial, dental and bony labyrinth variation in a diachronic and spatially bounded sample of the Argentinean Pampas, and b) Evaluate spatial patterns of morphological variation among the South American earliest specimens. Results from this study will not only contribute to current debates surrounding the diversification of the Pampean populations but also the cranial and dental variation of the earliest populations during the peopling of South America. Variation in dental shape, crania and bony labyrinth will be analyzed through virtual anthropology, as well as traditional and geometric morphometric methods by using CT-scans, linear measurements and 3D coordinates. The application of cutting-edge technologies from Virtual Anthropology such as high quality imaging will be combined with a detailed archaeological site study in an empiric cross-over between natural sciences and humanities. The project will benefit directly from collaborations between expert archaeologists and anthropologists of Southamerica and Europe. The Argentinean-German collaboration guarantees a detailed contextualisation of the human bone data that will generate a refined understanding of the Southamerica´s biocultural prehistory.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants