Crossing the Borders: New Methods and Techniques in the Study of Archaeological Materials from the Caribbean

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and discontinuity or for their random, chaotic distribution that limits its interpretation.
Specifically, our study aims to:
1. Assess the biological differences among the populations that occupied the same
area during different periods of time;
2. Compare the biological information with the evidence from the material culture
in order to understand whether the archaeological differences were to the
product of “biologically” distant populations or of cultural transformations of
populations that shared the same “biological” substrate;
3. Explore the diffusion model to infer whether the hunter- gatherers were “pushed
into marginal locations by the expansion of the agriculturalists or assimilated
into the expanding culture;
4. Expand the knowledge on the pattern of peopling of the Lesser Antilles;
5. Infer the possible role played by continental populations from Venezuela and
Florida.
Dental Morphology
Recent studies have shown that morphological dental traits may circumvent supposed
limitations of metric traits and provide useful information of microevolutionary
processes (Scott and Turner 1997). The importance of dental morphological
traits in anthropological studies was first perceived by Hrdlicka (1920) and
Dahlberg (1945, 1949) who reported significant differences in frequency among the
major geographic populations. Turner and collaborators (1991) developed a standardized
method to score dental morphological traits (Arizona State University
Dental Anthropology System), on the basis of Dahlberg’s method (1956). It proved
to be potentially highly discriminating in micro- and macroregional analyses of
biological relationships (Scott and Turner 1997). Their potentiality rests upon the
large number of traits available, the slow evolutionary rates that permit long- term
diachronic studies (Turner 1969), the reduced influence of environment on dental
morphology with the only exception of attrition (Dahlberg 1971; Larsen and
Kelley 1991), and their strong hereditary components (E. Harris 1977; Larsen and
Kelley 1991; Nichol 1989; G. Scott 1973; Townsend and Martin 1992; Townsend et
al. 1988; Townsend et al. 1992; Townsend et al. 1994; Turner 1967). Estimations on
heritability suggest that the genetic influence on dental traits can be as high as
60 percent (Berry 1978; Harris and Bailit 1980). Several papers have successfully
used morphological dental traits to address questions concerning the emergence
of modern humans (Irish 1998a; Scott and Turner 1997; Stringer et al. 1997) and
the peopling of Africa, Americas, Asia and Europe (Coppa et al. 1997; Coppa et al.
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