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

New Evidence of Two Different Migratory Waves / 209
nificant negative, discriminating values characterize the second premolar’s cusp
number and cusp 7 in the first molar. The Ciboney from Cuba show low values, as
low as 0.0 percent in Cueva del Perico and the pooled Ciboney. In turn, frequencies
are higher in the Taíno, the Saladoid, the Troumassoid samples, and those from
Venezuela. The frequency of both traits ranges between 30 and 50 percent and
peaks up to 64.3 percent in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Large variability can be found
in the expression of the premolar’s trait in the groups from Florida (8.5–58.3 percent),
and reduced expression in the cusp 7.
The mandibular M2 root number is the only trait that discriminates the second
component. Its frequencies are in the 40 to 50 percent range for the Cuban
Ciboney, while the Taíno vary between 15 and 25 percent, with Cueva Roja (17.4
percent) falling within the latter. Frequencies between 40 and 60 percent characterize
the Saladoid, Troumassoid, and Venezuelan samples, while the Floridians
range between 30 and 50 percent.
Mean Measure of Divergence (MMD)
The MMD matrix is shown in Table 14.4. The major distances (> 0.13) always separate
the Taíno from both the Floridians and all the Ciboney. At intragroup level, the
Taíno from Cuba and the Dominican Republic present low but significant values,
and nonsignificant values in the comparison with the samples from the U.S. Virgin
Islands. It must be underscored, anyway, that the latter shows low, nonsignificant
values also with Tick Island, Cueva Roja, and the pooled Ciboney. All the Ciboney
groups show low, nonsignificant distances among them, regardless of geography
and chronology. The Floridians bestow significant MMD values, with the exception
of the two Archaic Age samples. The Saladoids do not diverge much from the
groups of the U.S. Virgin Islands, Troumassoids, and Venezuela, and neither from
the Ciboney’s Cueva el Infierno. The Troumassoid sample reveals low values with
Venezuela, Saladoids, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, but also with Tick Island and the
pooled Ciboney. Last, Venezuela, shows nonsignificant distances with some of the
Florida and Ciboney groups, along with it is those geographically close to them.
Multidimensional Scaling (MDS)
The MDS applied to the MMD matrix (Table 14.4) produces fairly similar results
to those generated by the PCA analysis (Figure 14.2) and the ML tree (Figure 14.3).
The scatter plot of the first and second dimensions (Figure 14.4) indicates that
the Cuban groups cluster with Cueva Roja in the upper left quadrant. A second
group on the right is formed by the Taíno. A third group, composed of the Saladoid
and Troumassoid sample, is placed in between the Taíno. The other groups from
Florida gather on the lower left part of the plot. Venezuela gets closer to the other
groups from Florida as in the previous analysis.
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