Biodistances

Located at the foot of Mount Olympus, Dion was the Macedonians' religious center and federal shrine from the 5th c. BC onward. In 169 BC the city fell to the Romans, and in 32/31 BC Dion became a Roman colony and flourished until the end of the 3rd century AD. Dion was a highly connected urban centre and part of the network of colonies established in the Greek Peninsula by the Romans. Epigraphic texts and coinage bear witness to a bilingual population and a community that gradually evolved in a process of interaction and exchange leading to the fusion of the Roman and Greek cultures, a multi-ethnic population and a complex society. Our investigation aims at evaluating the degree of fusion between the Greek and Roman culture at the colony of Dion through the lense of bioarchaeology. Within this frame, we present here preliminary results on stable isotope and biodistance analysis collected from the Roman burials (1 st-3 rd centuries) unearthed at the North and West necropolis of the city. We test the question whether individuals buried in these two distinct archaeological groupings represent different biological and/or sociocultural units; to reach this aim, we compare the diet (δ 13 C, δ 15 N) and biodistance of individuals buried in the two necropoleis. Results offer new insights into the genetic, social and cultural makeup of Roman colonies in Greece and underline the importance of interdisciplinarity in the analysis of cultural contact of past populations.

RESUMEN Los modelos bioantropológicos y arqueológicos proponen cambios en la demografía, en la organización social, en las dinámicas poblacionales y en las redes de interacción social entre los grupos cazadores-recolectores del norte de la Patagonia y del sur pampeano durante los últimos 1000 años. El objetivo de este trabajo es explorar, desde la
perspectiva de la antropología dental, si los individuos recuperados en el curso inferior del río Colorado (transición pampeano-patagónica oriental, provincia de Buenos Aires), inhumados durante el Holoceno tardío (ca. 3000-250 años AP), pertenecieron a diferentes poblaciones biológicas o si, por el contrario, compartieron un pool génico común a lo largo
de ese período. Para alcanzar este objetivo se realizaron
análisis métricos de la dentición permanente de 21 individuos adultos de ambos sexos, procedentes de tres sitios arqueológicos.
Los resultados indican una similitud en la dispersión de
los valores obtenidos, lo que permitiría inferir cierta continuidad fenotípica. En este sentido, no se observan segregaciones claras entre grupos de individuos, de manera que es posible plantear que no habrían existido divergencias biológicas entre los grupos humanos que inhumaban a sus ancestros en el área durante todo el lapso considerado. Estos datos contrastan con la información generada en áreas vecinas (p. ej., Pampa
occidental), lo que indicaría que durante el Holoceno tardío final (ca. 1000-250 años AP) se habrían desarrollado diferentes procesos y dinámicas poblacionales (p.ej., regionalización) a nivel macro-regional.

ABSTRACT Bioanthropological and archaeological models propose changes in demography, social organization, population dynamics, and social network interactions among hunter-gatherer groups of northern Patagonia and southern Pampas over the last 1000 years BP. Following this argument, the aim of this paper is to examine, from a dental anthropological perspective, whether the individuals recovered in the lower course of the Colorado river (Eastern Pampean-Patagonian transition, Buenos Aires province, Argentina), buried during the late Holocene (ca. 3000-250 years BP), belonged to different biological populations or, on the contrary, whether they shared a common gene pool
throughout this period. To achieve this goal, dental metrics were performed on adults from both sexes, recovered from three archaeological sites. The results indicate a similarity in the dispersion of the values obtained, which would allow the inference of certain phenotypic continuity. In this sense, no clear segregations among groups of individuals are
observed, so that it is possible to argue that biological differences would not have existed among the human groups that buried their ancestors in the lower course of the Colorado river during the period considered. These data contrast with the information generated in neighboring areas (e.g., western Pampas), indicating that during the final late Holocene (ca. 1000-250 years BP) different processes and population dynamics (e.g., regionalization) developed at a macro-regional level.

The use of dental metrics as a reliable tool for the assessment of biological distances has diversified dramatically in the last decades. In this paper, some of the basic assumptions on this issue and the potential of cervical measurements in biodistance protocols are discussed. A sample of 1173 permanent teeth from 57 male and female individuals, recovered in Chenque I site (Western Pampas, Central Argentina), a Late Holocene hunter-gatherer cemetery, is examined in order to test the impact of exogenous factors that may have influenced the phenotypic manifestation and affected dental crown sizes. The statistical association between dental metric data, obtained by measuring the mesiodistal and buccolingual diameters of the crown and cervix, and the quantification of hypoplastic defects as a measure to evaluate the influence of the environment in the dental phenotypic expression is evaluated. The results show that socioenvironmental stress did not affect dental metrics and that only the more stable teeth (first incisors, canines, first premolars and first molars) and three variables (buccolingual diameter of the crown and both mesiodistal and buccolingual measurements of the cervix) should be included in multivariate analyses. These suggestions must be strengthened with additional studies of other regional samples to identify factors of variation among populations, so as to develop general guidelines for dental survey and biodistance analysis, but they are a first step for discussing assumptions usually used and maximizing the available information for low-density hunter-gatherer societies.