Abstract

PEREZ, S. Ivan. Morfometría de poblaciones humanas prehistóricas: Una comparación de técnicas tradicionales y geométricas. Intersecciones antropol. [online]. 2003, n.4, pp.121-129. ISSN 1850-373X.

The aim of this paper is to compare different techniques derived from traditional and geometric morphometrics used to analyze the shape of the cranio-facial skeleton at an intra-specific level. Three diachronic samples belonging to male individuals from the southeastern Pampas were taken as the case study. They belong to the Early/Middle Holocene transition (Ht/m, ca. 8000 to 6000 B.P., n= 4), the Early Late Holocene (Htai, ca. 3000 to 2000 B.P., n= 6), and the Later Late Holocene (Htaf, ca. 1000 to 400 B.P., n= 4) (Barrientos and Perez 2002). The other two samples were taken from the northeast of Patagonia, and although there is no radiometric chronological data, they probably belong to the Late Holocene [e.g. Isla Gama (IG), n= 6 and San Blas (SB), n= 8] (Figure 1 and Table 1). These samples were chosen on the basis that they are currently being used to study the peopling of the southeastern Pampas (Barrientos and Perez 2002). Principal components analyses were performed on the variables obtained by using several statistical techniques (ratios, multivariated residuals, Procrustes residuals and partial warps), Pearson product-moment correlation, one way ANOVA and a variance post hoc test (Least Significant Difference or LSD). Three sets of results were obtained, and they are represented by a) the multivariate residuals, b) the ratios and Procrustes residuals and, finally, c) the partial warps. The differences registered between these sets are consistent with the results obtained in a recent partial evaluation made of the techniques employed in this paper. They indicate that the multivariate residuals are not so efficient for separating the size component from the shape component (Jungers et al. 1995), that the ratios and Procrustes residuals describe the global shape change (Jungers et al. 1995; Lynch et al. 1995), and that the partial warps offer a greater amount of taxonomically meaningful morphometric information, since they describe the differences in the relative position of each landmark considered for the analysis (Rohlf et al. 1996).

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