Sessão The methodologies applied in bioarchaeology: apresentação de Luís Miguel Marado

“The value of dental morphology in the archaeological context: example of a Portuguese population from the late 19th and early 20th centuries”

Luís Miguel Marado

Departamento de Ciências da Vida, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal
Research Center for Anthropology and Health (CIAS), University of Coimbra, Portugal

The observation of dental non-metric characters used in the Arizona State University Dental Anthropology System (ASUDAS) is of major interest in the study of past populations. Dental morphological traits are genetically determined, and dependent of a small and stable part of the genome; their development seems unaffected by the uterine environment and their evolution is slow, probably independent of natural selection. The relative frequency of dental traits is a testimony to the biological distances between populations.
The study of the mandible and inferior dentition in a late XIXth/early XXth century sample deceased in Oporto, Portugal, is the example of a statistically simple approach to the biological comparison between populations, using the ASUDAS (Turner et al., 1991), mainly, but also a trait proposed by Weets (2009), and Hauser e De Stefano (1989), Movsesjan et al. (1975 in Galera et al., 1995) and Albuquerque (1952) for the mandibular anatomic traits.
The comparisons with international samples denoted biological relatedness with European and, to a lesser extent, North African populations. The Iberian samples also suggest a close relationship with those populations, particularly those from the current Portuguese territory.
The use of the ASUDAS and complementary methods to the morphological study of teeth from archaeological contexts is important. It will allow for a greater collection of data to be used in the determination of the population history of the Iberian Peninsula. Important questions, relative to cultural influence/colonization or to the proportion of indigenous and colonizing populations, for example, may then be closer to resolution.