The biological relationships among Indian groups of the Southwest. Analysis of morphological traits

The dental morphology of Pima Indians

Fourteen morphologic crown traits were observed in a sample of 1528 Pima Indians of south-central Arizona. Pima dentitions are characterized by high frequencies of shoveling, incisor winging, the hypocone, the lower canine distal accessory ridge, cusp 6, and the protostylid. They exhibit low frequencies of the metaconule and lower premolar multiple lingual cusps and moderate frequencies of the canine tubercle, Carabelli's trait, cusp 7, and lower second molars with four cusps and X groove patterns. When Pima crown trait frequencies were compared to those of 13 Southwest Indian samples, their closest affinities were to other Uto-Aztecan groups, the Papago and Hopi. The Pima are most divergent from Athapaskans and are also clearly removed from Yuman speaking groups and the Zuni. In general, the pattern of dental morphologic variation in the Southwest corresponds closely to linguistic divisions.

A multivariate, osteological approach to Towa culture history

Eleven cranial measurements on 14 archeological populations from the American Southwest support the archeologically derived reconstruction of Towa population movements. The supposed (linguistic) relationship between Pecos and the Towa speaking villages is questioned.

A quantitative method of morphological assessment of hybridization in the U. S. Negro-white male crania

The study develops a morphological method of assessing the amount of parental components in a U.S. Negro‐White Hybrid sample and tests to what extent a multivariate discriminant analysis actually reflects the morphological pattern of hybridization.

To formulate norms of description for the parental and hybrid populations, a seventeenth century London Farringdon Street series of 94 crania was selected to represent the British White ancestral component and the data on the cadaverand‐skeletal series in the T. W. Todd collection of Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, were used in the selection of 115 Unmixed Negro and 115 Negro‐White Hybrid male crania.

The conclusions are: (1) the morphological scores of the Negro‐White Hybrid series shows a biological overlap with the two parental series in the proportion of 1:3 (i.e., 25% White to 75% Negro). This overlap reflects the probable porportion of ancestral mixture in the ratio of one‐fourth White to three‐fourths Negro in the Negro‐White Hybrid sample; and (2) the morphological approach to the assessment of the parental components with multivariate discriminant analysis as a tool, proves to be highly reliable in providing a biologically meaningful index of relationship.