The dental morphology of the riverine and coastal shell-mound builders from the South-Southeast of Brazil

Abstract

This project tests if Brazilian shell-mound builders display significant intra- and inter-group phenotypic variation throughout the Holocene, to better understand the early dynamics of the peopling of the Brazilian meridional coast, and how relationships amongst coeval populations developed during pre-colonial times. Dental morphological traits will be used as proxies for genetic data, to reconstruct the population history of these shell-mound groups. The Arizona State University Dental Anthropological System (ASUDAS) will be used to characterize the dental remains. The skeletal series included in the study were exhumed from coastal and riverine shell-mounds of the states of São Paulo, Paraná, and Santa Catarina. To explore the relationship between series, morphological affinities will be assessed through multivariate biological distances.As stated in the FAPESP Process 2017/20637-4, there is a need for a research internship abroad, namely to the Ohio State University, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Mark Hubbe, who is also the official co-advisor of this project. The main purpose of this visit is to gain further knowledge about the methodological approaches to address the questions in this project. Specifically, the visit will focus on developing skills in R programming language, and becoming familiar with the most relevant statistical tests, like Euclidean distance matrices, Mean Measure of Divergence, Mahalanobis distance, Principal Component analysis, Hierarchical Clusters and Multidimensional Scaling, as well as several bootstrapping and resampling techniques.The training in statistical analysis will greatly enhance the quality of the research, preparing it for future publication, and will increase the relevance of the study internationally. Furthermore, it will also increase the chances of future collaborations, and the internationalization of scientific research in Brazil. (AU)