Origins and spread of agriculture in Italy: A nonmetric dental analysis

Abstract

Dental morphological traits were employed in this study as direct indicators of biological affinities among the populations that inhabited the Italian peninsula from the Upper Paleolithic-Mesolithic to Medieval times. Our analysis aims at contributing to the ongoing debate regarding the origin and spread of agriculture in the peninsula by contrasting the dental evidence of archaeological and modern molecular samples. It is not possible to generalize given the complex and dynamic nature of these populations. However, the results from the principal component analysis, maximum likelihood, mean measure of divergence, and multidimensional scaling do indicate a net separation of the Paleo-Mesolithic sample from the other groups that is not related to dental reduction. This suggests that the shift in dental morphology was the product of Neolithic populations migrating into the peninsula from other areas. Nonetheless, the Paleo-Mesolithic populations share several discriminative traits with the Neolithic group. The biological relevance of such evidence suggests that, to some minor extent, the spread of agriculture did not occur by total population replacement. Because of regional small sample sizes, this hypothesis cannot be tested on a micro-regional scale. It is, however, feasible to depict a scenario where processes of genetic mixture or replacement probably took place at different rates on a macro-regional level.

Do nuclear DNA and dental nonmetric data produce similar reconstructions of regional population history? An example from modern coastal Kenya

“…Many regional studies examine populations within a single country (e.g., Guatelli-Steinberg et al, 2001), region of a country (e.g., Hubbard, 2012), or bordering countries (e.g., Ullinger et al, 2005). As noted by Buikstra et al (1990), this more refined focus is common in the 5" " bioarchaeological literature and is reflected in an array of more recent publications (e.g., see Blom et al, 1998;Irish, 2006;Coppa et al, 2007;Sołtysiak and Bialon., 2013;Willermet et al, 2013;Irish et al, 2014). Such regional studies often focus on understanding mobility patterns (e.g., McIlvaine et al, 2014), trading networks (Ragsdale and Edgar, 2014), and other social phenomena (e.g., see Knudson and Stojanowski, 2008).…”

Non-Metric Dental Traits in Human Skeletal Remains from Transcaucasian Populations: Phylogenetic and Diachronic Evidence

“…Some specialists believe that it is highly diagnostic (Zubov 1973(Zubov , 1979Khaldeyeva 1992). Discrete dental traits are under genetic control (Scott and Turner 1997) and can be used to estimate genetic relationships among populations (Coppa et al 2007;Irish 2006). The frequency of distal trigonid crest LM1 in populations of the Bronze Age Armenian Highland ranges from 7.1% to 42.5%.…”

“…All of them have their parallelism in the non-metric cranial trait sphere. Similar type of studies are commonly used to determine specific research questions such as the diachronic changes in trait expressions in a particular region (Lukacs and Hemphill 1991;Cucina et al 1999;Gravere 1999;Coppa et al 2007). …”

“…Investigations have provided information on local-scale non-metric variation in the following populations: European (Kaczmarek and Pyżuk 1985;Kaczmarek 1991Kaczmarek , 1992Segeda 1993;Cucina et al 1999;Gravere 1999;Żądzinska et al 1999;Lease 2003;Coppa et al 2007;Vargiu et al 2009;Zubova 2010), Central Asian (Khodjaiov 1977;Rikushina et al 2003), The Near-Eastern (Smith 1978;Smith et al 1987;Moskona et al 1998;Sołtysiak and Bialon 2013), Asian and Pacific (Hanihara 1965(Hanihara , 1966(Hanihara , 1970Hanihara and Minamidate 1965;Hanihara 1992;Sasaki and Kanasawa 1998;Kitagawa 2000), Indian (Lukacs and Walimbe 1984;Lukacs and Hemphill 1991), Siberian (Tur 2009;Zubova 2008), Australian (Townsend and Brown 1981;Townsend et al 1986Townsend et al , 1990 and North American (Sciulli 1998;Tocheri 2002;Ullinger 2003;Lease 2003;Lease and Sciulli 2005;Edgar and Lease 2007). Surprisingly, past and present Transcaucasian populations have received little attention …”

Non-metric dental analysis of a Bronze Age population from the Armenian Plateau

“…Investigations have provided information on local-scale non-metric variation in the following populations (1) Asian and Pacific (Hanihara 1965(Hanihara , 1966Hanihara and Minamidate 1965;Sasaki and Kanasawa 1998;Kitagawa 2000), (2) African (Grine 1986(Grine , 1990Lease 2003), (3) Indian (Lukacs and Walimbe 1984;Lukacs and Hemphill 1991), (4) Central Asian (Khodjaiov 1977;Rikushina et al 2003), (5) European (Jørgensen 1956;Kaczmarek and Pyżuk 1985;Kaczmarek 1991Kaczmarek , 1992Segeda 1993;Cucina et al 1999;Gravere 1999;Lease 2003;Coppa et al 2007;Vargiu et al 2009;Zubova 2010), (6) The near East (Smith 1978;Smith et al 1987;Moskona et al 1998), Siberia (Postnikova 1974;Tur 2009;Zubova 2008), (7) Australian (Townsend and Brown 1981;Townsend et al 1986Townsend et al , 1990 and (8) North American (Sciulli 1998, Tocheri 2002Ullinger 2003;Lease 2003;Lease and Sciulli 2005;Edgar and Lease 2007).…”