Maya Skeletal Remains from the Copan and El Puente Sites in Honduras YUJI MIZOGUCHI1*, SEIICHI NAKAMURA2
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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. In this period the ancient was found between 1975 and 1985, and consists of at least Maya reached intellectual and artistic heights that surpassed 160 skeletons (Whittington, 1991). But, as far as the present anything found in the New World. Many city-kingdoms with authors know, no phylogenetic analysis based on morpho- their own ruling dynasties flourished in this period. Each logical characters or measurements has been carried out for kingdom had many populations and its rulers engaged in these materials, although several paleopathological or paleo- long-distance trade of exotic and rare objects such as jade demographic studies have been conducted (Storey, 1988, and marine shells. 1994; Whittington, 1991, 1992). In this report some basic However, at the end of the period these great cities of the data of ancient Maya skeletal remains are presented to accu- Classic Maya civilization declined and were finally aban- mulate information for use in future phylogenetic or other doned. The supporting populations never returned to the anthropological analyses. same place in the subsequent Postclassic period (900–1521 AD). This chain reaction of collapse and abandonment of the Classic kingdoms is referred to as the ‘collapse of Classic Materials Maya civilization’. Although various theories and hypothe- Of the four individuals observed and measured here, two sis have been proposed to explain this collapse (Culbert, are part of the remains unearthed at the Copan site between 1973), it is believed that some combination of factors, such 1999 and 2002, and the other two are part of the remains as external conflicts among the Classic Maya societies found at the El Puente site during the period 1990 to 1994. (wars), elite revolt against kings (Fash, 2001), climatic All these human remains were excavated under the direction change (Haug et al., 2003), and destruction of the environ- of S.N., as stated above. Both sites are located in the west- ment due to population growth, played a principal role in the ernmost area of Honduras (Figure 1). collapse. The identification numbers of the former two individuals The human skeletal remains reported here are four indi- are Copan 35-2000 (Burial #35-2000 from the 10J-45 com- viduals from the Classic period. They are part of some doz- pound of the Copan site) and Copan 36-2000 (Burial #36- ens of the remains which had been excavated by the middle 2000 from the 10J-45 compound of the Copan site), and of October, 2002, by a project team directed by one of the those of the latter two are El Puente 10-3 (Burial #3 from present authors (S.N.) at two sites of the Classic period in Structure 10 of the El Puente site) and El Puente 204-1 Honduras, i.e. the Copan site, one of the major Classic Maya (Burial #1 from Structure 204 of the El Puente site). The two individuals from the Copan site are thought to date back to * Corresponding author. e-mail: [email protected] around 550 AD on the basis of archaeological evidence phone: +81-3-5332-7170; fax: +81-3-3364-7104 (Nakamura, 2002, 2003), and the two individuals from the Published online 29 June 2005 El Puente site are of the Late Classic period, i.e. 600–900 in J-STAGE (www.jstage.jst.go.jp) DOI: 10.1537/ase.040331 AD (Nakamura, 1996). © 2005 The Anthropological Society of Nippon 75 76 Y. MIZOGUCHI AND S. NAKAMURA ANTHROPOLOGICAL SCIENCE and Stature [in cm] = 1.96 (Lateral condyle–malleolus length of tibia [in cm]) + 93.752 − 2.5 ± 2.815. In order to determine the affinities of ancient Mayan indi- viduals in relation to the comparative samples of various populations around the world, Q-mode correlation coeffi- cients (Sneath and Sokal, 1973) were calculated using the crown diameters of permanent teeth. The significance of the Q-mode correlation coefficients, strictly speaking, the z- transformed Q-mode correlation coefficients, was tested by the bootstrap method (Efron, 1979a, b, 1982; Diaconis and Efron, 1983; Mizoguchi, 1993). In order to estimate the bootstrap standard deviation of a z-transformed Q-mode cor- relation coefficient, 1000 bootstrap replications including the observed sample were used. The bootstrap standard devi- ation was obtained by directly counting the cumulative fre- quency for the standard deviation in the bootstrap distribution. Incidentally, it may be worthy of notice that the bootstrap method can be used for testing the significance of any statistic even if its distribution is different from a normal Figure 1. Maya region and principal archaeological sites. distribution. Statistical calculations were executed with the mainframe HITACHI MP5800 system of the Computer Centre, the Uni- El Puente 10-3 and 204-1 were observed and measured versity of Tokyo. The programs used are SDQCPC for R- for almost all major bones and permanent teeth. But, regard- mode standardization, BTPCA for estimating Q-mode corre- ing Copan 35-2000 and 36-2000, data were taken only on lation coefficients and for bootstrap tests of their signifi- the permanent teeth because the time available for observa- cance, and CLSTR for cluster analysis. All these programs tion was extremely limited. were written in FORTRAN by Y.M. Methods Brief Description Observation, measurement, and statistical analysis were The basic observations and measurements of the individ- conducted by Y.M. Cranial and postcranial measurements ual skeletal remains are shown in Appendices 1 to 8. Appen- were taken after Martin and Saller (1957), except for nasal dix 1 gives the cranial measurements; Appendix 2, scores of height, which was measured according to Howells (1973). non-metric cranial characters; Appendix 3, preservation of The mesiodistal (MD) and bucco- or labiolingual (BL or LL) permanent teeth and degree of occlusal wear of the first diameters of a tooth crown were measured with sliding cali- molars; Appendix 4, measurements of permanent teeth; pers to the nearest 0.1 mm according to Fujita’s (1949) Appendix 5, scores of non-metric tooth crown characters; method. The mesiodistal diameter of the dental cervix was Appendix 6, postcranial measurements; Appendix 7, obser- measured after Mizoguchi’s (1985) definition. The criteria vations of postcranial bones; and Appendix 8, stature esti- of classification for non-metric tooth crown characters can mates. be found in Mizoguchi (1977). The degree of occlusal wear The results of sex and age determinations and some other on the crown surface was recorded according to Broca’s information are briefly presented below. grading system (Martin and Saller, 1957). As for the terminology of teeth, the following abbrevia- Copan 35-2000 tions are used. I, C, P, and M designate the permanent inci- Female (?), senile (?). Although many bone fragments are sor, canine, premolar, and molar, respectively; numbers 1, 2, preserved, only the permanent teeth were observed and mea- and 3 indicate the position of the tooth within a tooth class; sured. and U and L means ‘of the maxilla’ and ‘of the mandible’, The sex determination is based on a fragment of the ilium respectively. For example, UM2 means the maxillary second around the greater sciatic notch, the mastoid process, and the molar. mandible. The iliac fragment suggests that this individual is Stature was estimated using the formulae for living Native a female, but the mastoid process is large and the mandible Mexican males, originally developed by Genoves (1967) is not small, implying the opposite sex. The alveoli for the and corrected according to the comments by Bass (1971). following teeth are closed: the right and left UI1s, UI2s and The formulae are as follows. UCs, the right UM2 and UM3, the right LI1, the left LI1 and LI2, and the left LM3. The closed alveoli and Broca’s score Stature [in cm] = 2.26 (Maximum length of femur of 2 for the LM1 (Appendix 3) suggest that this individual is [in cm]) + 66.379 − 2.5 ± 3.417 not a young adult. Vol. 114, 2006 MAYA SKELETAL REMAINS FROM HONDURAS 77 Although a mandibular premolar had been preserved in the first molars and the erupted third molars (Appendix 3), addition to the permanent teeth shown in Appendix 3, the does not contradict this age estimation.