Discerning Dispersals along the Pacific and Interior Corridors: Contributions of Geometric Morphometrics to the Peopling of the Americas

ABSTRACT

Recent discussions of human dispersals into the Americas have integrated available genomic data, locations and dates of archaeological sites, chronologies for initial biological viability of the Pacific coast and western Canadian ice-free corridors, and respective hypotheses to explain the initial peopling of the continents. Currently, these lines of evidence are incomplete given the lack of geographically and chronologically continuous data available for any one avenue of research. Here we discuss the potential for geometric morphometric shape analysis of human skeletal remains and stone projectile artifacts to supplement these data and expand our understanding of human dispersals into the Americas. The evolutionarily plastic nature of human skeletons and artifacts offers an alternative means of testing hypotheses of initial dispersal events and human adaptation to changing climate and ecosystems.

KEYWORDS:

• Geometric morphometrics
• peopling of the Americas
• cranial morphology
• projectile-point morphology
• stemmed points

Acknowledgements

Development of this paper commenced as part of Wilson Workshop 1, which focused on the Stemmed Point tradition of western North America and was organized by the Center for the Study of the First Americans (Texas A&M University), Hakai Institute, and University of Victoria. We are very grateful for the invitation to participate in this workshop and publication. We thank Duane Froese for helpful comments and suggestions during the formulation stages of this manuscript. We are most indebted to David Thulman and Ted Goebel for comments and critiques that led to a much-improved final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Heather L. Smith received her PhD in Anthropology from Texas A&M University in 2015 and now serves as Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Eastern New Mexico University. Her research interests include human adaptation and dispersals in the late Pleistocene, the adaptive role of lithic technology during the Pleistocene–Holocene transition, and quantitative methods of material culture analyses with an emphasis on geometric morphometrics, GIS, geoarchaeology, evolutionary archaeology, and cultural transmission. Smith specializes in the transmission of Paleoindian lithic technology between areas south of the late-Pleistocene ice sheets and the Arctic.

Susan C. Kuzminsky earned her PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2013 and is currently an Assistant Professor and Director of the Forensic Science Program at Eastern New Mexico University. As a human skeletal biologist, her research focuses on evolutionary adaptations and the population history of western North America and South America. Kuzminsky emphasizes non-destructive and minimally-destructive approaches to investigating ancient human dispersals, climate adaptation, and paleodiet among the first Americans and other prehistoric adaptations among mid-late Holocene highland/coastal inhabitants of Peru and Chile. Her research also extends to forensic casework for law enforcement and government entities.

Anna Linderholm received her PhD from Stockholm University in 2008. She is an archaeologist and molecular biologist with a special interest in scientific methods applied on archaeological materials, namely ancient DNA and stable isotopes. She is an Associate Professor and Director of The BiG lab (Bioarchaeology and Genomics Laboratory) in the Department of Anthropology at Texas A&M University where she works on a wide range of topics based on archaeological samples from both human and animal collections. Apart from evolution, migration, and domestication, Linderholm focuses on climate change and the effect it has on human genetics.

ORCID

Heather L. Smith http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1031-0478

Susan C. Kuzminsky http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1352-9715

Anna Linderholm http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1613-9926