Variación de la morfología craneofacial en restos femeninos del arcaico temprano de México

Abstract

The present work is an analysis of the craniofacial morphological variation of four female specimens that are chronologically located in the Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene and Middle Pleistocene transition. They come from different parts of Mexican territory: two from the Mexico Basin, one from the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley and one from the submerged cave of Las Palmas, Yucatan Peninsula: the Woman of Astahuacán I (10 300 + 600 years BP), the Woman of the Peñon III (10 755 + 55 years BP), the Woman of Texcal (7 233 + 36 years BP) and the Woman of Las Palmas (8 050 + 130 years BP). The morphology of these specimens was compared to other cranial samples from more recent chronological periods: Tlatilco and Zacatenco (Preclassic), Caves La Candelaria and La Paila, Coahuila and Baja California Sur (Postclassic). The latter have been considered to have certain cranial morphological characteristics related to those observed in the first populations that entered the New World. It was included, also, as a comparative material, a series of skulls of Mayan population of xix Century, from the city of Campeche. From the examination of eight craniofacial measurements, multivariate techniques such as principal component analysis (pca) and discriminant analysis were applied. The results suggest that there is a remarkable variability within the preceramic group, in contrast to the morphology observed in the skulls of later times in the Mesoamerican area.