AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 114:146–155 (2001) Variation Among Early North American Crania R.L. Jantz1* and Douglas W. Owsley2 1Department of Anthropology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-0720 2Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560 KEY WORDS Paleoamericans; cranial morphometrics; New World ABSTRACT The limited morphometric work on early mens and Swanson Lake). American crania to date has treated them as a single, These crania were also compared to Howells’ worldwide temporally defined group. This paper addresses the ques- recent sample, which was expanded by including six ad- tion of whether there is significant variability among an- ditional American Indian samples. None of the fossils, cient American crania. A sample of 11 crania (Spirit Cave, except for the Wet Gravel male, shows any particular Wizards Beach, Browns Valley, Pelican Rapids, Prospect, affinity to recent Native Americans; their greatest simi- Wet Gravel male, Wet Gravel female, Medicine Crow, larities are with Europe, Polynesia, or East Asia. Several Turin, Lime Creek, and Swanson Lake) dating from the crania would be atypical in any recent population for early to mid Holocene was available. Some have recent which we have data. Browns Valley, Pelican Rapids, and accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dates, while others Lime Creek are the most distinctive. They provide evi- are dated geologically or archaeologically. All are in excess dence for the presence of an early population that bears no of 4500 BP, and most are 7000 BP or older. Measurements similarity to the morphometric pattern of recent American follow the definitions of Howells [(1973) Cranial variation Indians or even to crania of comparable date in other in man, Cambridge: Harvard University). Some crania are regions of the continent. incomplete, but 22 measurements were common to all fossils. Cranial variation was examined by calculating the The heterogeneity among early American crania makes Mahalanobis distance between each pair of fossils, using a it inadvisable to pool them for purposes of morphometric pooled within sample covariance matrix estimated from analysis. Whether this heterogeneity results from differ- the data of Howells. The distance relationships among ent early migrations or one highly differentiated popula- crania suggest the presence of at least three distinct tion cannot be established from our data. Our results are groups: 1) a middle Archaic Plains group (Turin and Med- inconsistent with hypotheses of an ancestor-descendent icine Crow), 2) a Paleo/Early Archaic Great Lakes/Plains relationship between early and late Holocene American group (Browns Valley, Pelican Rapids, Lime Creek), and populations. They suggest that the pattern of cranial vari- 3) a spatially and temporally heterogeneous group that ation is of recent origin, at least in the Plains region. Am includes the Great Basin/Pacific Coast (Spirit Cave, Wiz- J Phys Anthropol 114:146–155, 2001. ards Beach, Prospect) and Nebraska (Wet Gravel speci- © 2001 Wiley-Liss, Inc. Native North American populations have vari- early American crania fell within the range of vari- ously been viewed as biologically uniform, or ex- ation of recent Indians, and could not be distin- tremely diverse. Stewart (1973) emphasized the guished from them (Owsley and Jantz, 1999a). For- phenotypic uniformity, while Hooton (1930) saw tunately, a renewed interest in the crania of early Caucasoid, Melanesoid, and Negritoid “types” in the Americans has occurred, using a modern analytical American population. Recent work with classical framework based on multivariate statistics. Initial markers (Cavalli-Sforza et al., 1994), dentition studies have shown that the craniometric pattern (Haydenblit, 1996), and anthropometry (Ousley, departs from contemporary American Indians, often 1995) has demonstrated that modern native popula- in the direction of European or Southern Pacific tions are strongly differentiated. It is obviously im- portant to understand the extent and patterning of variation among New World populations, since this Grant sponsor: Calhoun Foundation; Grant sponsor: National Mu- context of diversity is the framework against which seum of Natural History. We thank Roberta Hall for inviting us to participate in the AAPA models for the peopling of the New World must be symposium “Biological Variation and Population Origins in the Amer- tested. icas and Australia,” at which a version of this paper was presented in A puzzling aspect of the discussion concerning the 1998. origin and history of New World populations is how little the study of ancient crania has contributed. *Correspondence to: R.L. Jantz, Department of Anthropology, Uni- versity of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996-0720. This lack of emphasis is in large part due to the E-mail: [email protected] influence of Hrdlicka (1937a,b), who repeatedly at- tempted to show that the morphology of supposed Received 7 December 1998; accepted 21 September 2000. © 2001 WILEY-LISS, INC. EARLY AMERICAN CRANIA 147 TABLE 1. Early American crania used in this study Specimen Sex Location Date Reference (date; description) Spirit Cave M Nevada 9,415 BP Dansie, 1997; Jantz and Owsley, 1997 Wizards Beach M Nevada 9,225 BP Dansie, 1997; Owsley and Jantz, 1999b Prospect M Oregon 7,000 BP Cressman, 1940 Wet Gravel F Nebraska Frankforter, 1950; Key, 1983 Wet Gravel M Nebraska Frankforter, 1950; Key, 1983 Browns Valley M Minnesota 8,900 BP Myster and O’Connell, 1997; Jenks, 1937 Pelican Rapids F Minnesota 7,840 BP Myster and O’Connell, 1997; Jenks, 1936 Medicine Crow M S. Dakota 5,500 BP Bass, 1976; Key, 1983 Turin M Iowa 4,720 BP Fisher et al., 1985 Lime Creek M Nebraska Key, 1983 Swanson Lake M Nebraska Key, 1983 groups (Steele and Powell, 1992, 1994), or even Af- Mount Mazama eruption around 7000 BP (Cress- ricans and Australians (Neves and Pucciarelli, 1991; man, 1940). Dates for the remaining crania are pri- Neves et al., 1996). marily stratigraphic or archaeological and therefore What has not yet been approached in a systematic imprecise, but nonetheless are likely to be early. manner is variation among Paleoamerican fossils. Fossil crania were compared to the world data- This issue is difficult to address, because the sam- base by Howells (1989) of recent crania. The Howells ples are individual specimens, and standard statis- samples are mainly from historic populations, and tical approaches designed to assess variation among all are post-Neolithic. Only three of Howells’ 28 sam- samples are inappropriate. This paper addresses ples are Native Americans (Arikara, Santa Cruz, that issue as a preliminary step toward understand- and Peru). We have therefore supplemented the Na- ing whether the early New World populations were tive American samples with six historic samples of differentiated. If early populations are relatively ho- our own: Blackfoot (n ϭ 66), Cheyenne (n ϭ 22), mogeneous, it places a time constraint on the vari- Omaha (n ϭ 16), Pawnee (n ϭ 27), Ponca (n ϭ 19), ation observed in present populations and forces us and Sioux(n ϭ 28). to consider later events for causation. On the other hand, if the early populations were strongly differ- Measurements entiated, then the question becomes one of how the The general availability of the worldwide cranial ancient diversity relates to recent diversity, and database of Howells (1973, 1989) has encouraged whether continuity with recent populations can be others to record measurements in the same format. established. We have followed an expanded version of this pro- MATERIALS AND METHODS tocol for years (Key, 1983), producing an extensive Crania North American database fully compatible with that of Howells. Complete measurement sets cannot be Ancient crania available for this analysis are obtained on all crania listed in Table 1. All crania shown in Table 1. The sample includes those early except Browns Valley were complete or nearly com- crania that have been measured using the measure- plete and undistorted. The major reconstruction re- ment protocol of Howells (1973) (see Measurements, quired of Browns Valley is attachment of the face, below). The date range includes specimens that are but the base is unreconstructable. The reconstruc- considered by most archaeologists to be marginally tion by Jenks (1937) of the base is unreliable, as he “Paleoamerican,” or definitely within the Early Ar- himself points out. However, Howells’ measure- chaic period. We did not require that chronometric ments contain considerable redundancy, and it is dates be firmly established, only that the skull falls possible to exclude certain variables and still accu- into the early Holocene, not later than 4500 BP. rately quantify morphology. Radii are particularly Several specimens have recent accelerator mass useful in this regard, since they parallel standard spectrometry (AMS) dates and are accurately dated measurements taken from basion. Nasion and (Turin, Spirit Cave, Wizards Beach, Browns Valley, bregma radii, for example, are comparable to basion- and Pelican Rapids). Others have attributed geolog- nasion length and basion-bregma height, respec- ical dates, such as the Wet Gravel specimens which tively, except that they are taken from the trans- were pumped out of a gravel pit. Although direct meatal axis rather than basion. In addition, radii stratigraphic context is missing, both have a dark quantify lateral facial projections of the upper and stain imparted by a peat layer, a taphonomic feature mid-face, which are missed in traditional measure- shared with Pleistocene fauna from the pit that pro- ment sets. vides evidence for temporal association (Frankfort- The resulting analysis is based on 22 measure- er, 1950). The Wet Gravel female is especially dark ments (Table 2). The designated measurement set and mineralized, while the male is less so, suggest- quantifies overall length, breadth, facial variation, ing that it might be more recent. The Prospect burial projections from the transmeatal axis (radii), and was stratigraphically positioned below ash from the facial projections. Excluded were measurements 148 R.L. JANTZ AND D.W.