Disease, Demography, and Diet in Early Colonial New Spain: Investigation of a Sixteenth-Century Mixtec Cemetery at Teposcolula Yucundaa

Abstract

A mid-sixteenth-century cemetery was investigated at the colonial Mixtec site of Teposcolula Yucundaa and is shown to be related to the cocoliztli pandemic of 1544–1550. This is the earliest colonial epidemic cemetery to be identified in Mexico. Through archaeogenetic and oxygen stable isotope analysis it is demonstrated that the interred individuals were local Mixtecs, and mortuary analysis sheds light on both Christian and traditional religious practices at the site. Mitochondrial haplogroup frequencies support long-term genetic continuity in the region, and carbon stable isotopes of bone collagen and enamel carbonates suggest no decrease in maize consumption during the early colonial period, despite historical evidence for a changing agricultural economy and increased wheat production at the site. The Teposcolula cemetery provides a rich and complex perspective on early colonial life in the Mixteca Alta and reaffirms the importance of archaeological and bioarchaeological evidence in investigating complex social and biological processes of the past.

Salmonella entericagenomes recovered from victims of a major 16th century epidemic in Mexico

“…Previous work demonstrated ancient DNA preservation at the site through the identification of New World mitochondrial haplogroups in 48 individuals, 28 of which overlap with this study (28). Additionally, oxygen isotope analysis identified them as local inhabitants (28). Radiocarbon dating of selected individuals from both burial sites support archaeological evidence that the Grand Plaza and churchyard contain contact and precontact era burials, respectively (29).…”

“…Our approach limits ascertainment biases and false positive assignments that could result from databases deficient in environmental taxa. We applied MALT to non-enriched DNA sequence data from the pulp chamber of teeth collected from indigenous individuals excavated at the site of Teposcolula-Yucundaa, located in the highland Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca, Mexico (27,28). The site contains both pre-contact and contact era burials, including the earliest identified contact era epidemic burial ground in Mexico (28,29) (Fig.…”

“…Interpretations of ethnohistorical and archaeological evidence have suggested hemorrhagic fever, some form of typhus or typhoid fever (from the Spanish "tifus mortal"), measles, and bubonic plague as potential causes of the cocoliztli epidemic of 1545-50 CE (10,12,28,30,40). Previous investigation of sequencing data generated from the Teposcolula-Yucundaa material did not identify DNA traces of ancient pathogens; however, S. enterica was not considered as a candidate (41).…”

False positives complicate ancient pathogen identifications using high-throughput shotgun sequencing

“…This indicates that the human DNA in the soil has undergone more degradation than that in the bone, a result inconsistent with the laboratory contamination hypothesis [30]. Moreover, although mitochondrial haplotype profiles were incomplete due to absence of a mitochondrial DNA enrichment step, the individual haplotypes (based on the Illumina sequences) generally agreed with those found in [29], although a high rate of nucleotide misincorporations was observed (Additional file 3). Analysis of these substitutions using mapDamage2.0 showed the characteristic ancient DNA pattern, with higher rates of C → T and G → A transitions at the 5′- and 3′-termini respectively [47].…”

The Dutch whalers: a test of a human migration in the oxygen, carbon and nitrogen isotopes of cortical bone collagen

“…The range of δ 18 O values obtained (left to right) from the compact bone osteonal subsamples from the four individual whalers and compared to the range in δ 18 O observed in the bulk collagen of large population of sedentary humans from Mexico (n = 46) described inWarinner et al 2012) and two rat populations (n = 5; n = 4) fed monotonous diets(Kirsanow and Tuross 2011).…”