Documenting and contextualizing skeletal collection from Municipal Cemetery of Xolcan, Merida, Yucatan.

Abstract

This article describes the collection history and composition of a recently accrued reference series, composed of 84 documented skeletons from the Xoclán Cemetery of the County of Mérida, Yucatan. This series was collected as part of the Project Demografía y enfermedad de los antiguos habitantes de Yucatán a través del análisis histomorfológico de sus restos, and is the first of its kind from the Yucatecan penninsula, an area that today is home to short of 2 million people. It is curated at the Facultad de Ciencias Antropológicas of the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán. The information of each individual was obtained from the civil records provided by the Municipal Government of Mérida and put into collective context by consulting the national and municipal censuses (of the years 2000 and 2005, respectively). The results show the majority of the individuals to be elderly and males. Most of them are locals and come from low to average socioeconomic sectors, considering the income levels of the last residence. The representativeness of this collection for regional skeletal study is discusses, as are the possible uses in Mexican forensic, anthropological, and medical research.