Maya Skeletal Remains from the Copan and El Puente Sites in Honduras YUJI MIZOGUCHI1*, SEIICHI NAKAMURA2
ANTHROPOLOGICAL SCIENCE Vol. 114, 75–88, 2006 Maya skeletal remains from the Copan and El Puente sites in Honduras YUJI MIZOGUCHI1*, SEIICHI NAKAMURA2 1Department of Anthropology, National Science Museum, 3-23-1 Hyakunin-cho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 169-0073 Japan 2Copan Archaeological Project, Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History, Copan Ruins, Honduras Received 31 March 2004; accepted 29 March 2005 Abstract The permanent teeth of two individuals from the 10J-45 compound in the Classic Maya site of Copan, Honduras, and the whole skeletons of two individuals from the El Puente site, a secondary Maya center of Copan, were morphologically observed and measured. Preliminary analyses of the well-preserved permanent teeth of the two El Puente individuals show that one is closest to Native South Americans and the other to Native North Americans. Although many human skeletal remains have already been excavated at these two sites, they have not fully been studied. In addition, many other archaeological sites in Honduras also remain to be investigated. Key words: skull, permanent teeth, postcranial skeleton, Q-mode correlation, Native Americans Introduction centers (Fash, 2001), and the El Puente site, a secondary Maya center (Nakamura, 1996). At the Copan site, some Many Maya archaeological sites have been found in the hundreds of skeletal remains have been uncovered up to the area of southeastern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, western present (Maca and Rhoads, 2002). At least one series of Honduras, and western El Salvador. The most flourishing skeletal remains was excavated in 1938 and 1939, though period of the Maya civilization is called the Classic period, these were badly preserved (Longyear, 1940), and another which lasted from 250 to 900 AD.
[Show full text]