Doctoral Dissertation Improvement: Human skeletal variation in the prehistoric New World: geographic, temporal and climatic effects

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，本杰明奥尔巴赫先生正在研究新世界人类的地理和时间多样性史前样本中的身体大小和形状变化。该项目使用从美洲各地大量遗址考古收集的骨骼进行公制测量。 这些措施将有助于显示身体大小和形状的模式如何随着时间的推移和与环境的关系而在美洲原住民中发生变化。 具体而言，这项研究将探讨物理变化如何受到气候因素和生存战略（例如，饮食和食物获取）。 它还将解决这些关系如何帮助解释人口历史（人口流动和祖先）。收集的测量结果将用于推导形态特征（身高，体重和身体比例），采用传统和最近开发和完善的技术。 将评估这些特征之间的协变，以研究身体各区域之间的形态异质性。例如，前臂长度相对于手臂长度的变化，与肢体总长度相对于身体总长度的变化相比如何？ 同样，头骨的形态变化与身体其他部位的变化相比如何？ 结果将有重要的意义，解释过去的研究，只集中在身体的某些区域，并建立不同的身体区域对环境因素的协调反应的数量。 将使用代表地理上有限区域若干时期的样本来评估这些变化的比例和规模，并将其与已知的人口和生计变化联系起来。 结果将解释使用组关系的知识，并可能反过来，帮助解决这些关联中的歧义。美洲原住民身体形状的变化和身体不同区域之间模式的对应关系（例如，头骨和四肢）从未在地理和时间上不同的样本中进行过评估。 将这些模式与气候和营养等潜在影响联系起来，将阐明这些变量如何促进美洲和地球仪其他地方的生物多样性。 此外，了解环境因素如何影响新世界的体型和变化，对于理解人类进化和多样化的这些模式至关重要。 现代人类对美洲的殖民化提供了一个理想的模型，可以用来研究这些主题;新世界人类在相对于人类进化中其他一些已知的主要迁移事件的有限时期内定居在不同的环境中，并采用了过多的生存和文化习俗。这项研究的结果将导致美洲原住民形态多样性的更全面的了解，在何种程度上这种物理形状的多样性已经改变了环境因素。 研究结果将更好地解释美洲原住民的起源和殖民化以及美洲原住民的多样性，以及现代人类的一般生物适应。 重建身高和评估考古种群形态多样性的新标准将被制定并提供给其他研究人员。 此外，本研究中进行的研究将有助于完成奥尔巴赫先生的研究生培训。

Using support from the National Science Foundation, Mr. Benjamin Auerbach is investigating body size and shape variation among a geographically and temporally diverse prehistoric sample of New World humans. This project uses metric measures from archaeologically collected bones from an large number of sites throughout the Americas. These measures will help show how patterns of body size and shape have varied among Native Americans through time and in relation to their environments. Specifically, the study will address how physical variation has been affected by adaptations to climatic factors and to subsistence strategy (e.g., diet and food acquisition). It will also address how these relationships aid in interpreting population history (population movements and ancestry). The collected measures will be used to derive morphological characters (stature, body mass, and body proportions), employing conventional and recently-developed and refined techniques. Covariation among these characters will be assessed to investigate morphological heterogeneity among regions of the body. For example, how does variation in the length of the forearm, relative to the length of the arm, compare to variation in total limb length relative to total body length? Similarly, how does morphological variation in the skull compare to variation in the rest of the body? Results will have important implications for interpreting past studies that have only focused on some regions of the body, and for establishing the amount of coordinated response of different body regions to environmental factors. Samples that represent a number of time periods from geographically limited regions will be used to assess such changes in proportion and size over time, and relate these to known demographic and subsistence changes. The results will be interpreted using knowledge of group relationships and may, in turn, help resolve ambiguities in these associations. The variation of Native American body shape and the correspondence in patterns among different regions of the body (e.g., the skull and the limbs) have never been assessed among a geographically and temporally diverse sample. Correlating these patterns with potential influences such as climate and nutrition will elucidate how these variables contribute to biological diversity in the Americas and elsewhere around the globe. Moreover, understanding how environmental factors influence body shape and variation in the New World is critical for comprehending these patterns in human evolution and diversification in general. The colonization of the Americas by modern humans presents an ideal model by which to investigate many of these topics; New World humans settled varied environments and adopted a plethora of subsistence and cultural practices within a circumscribed period relative to some other known major migration events in human evolution. Results of this study will lead to a more holistic understanding of Native American morphological diversity and the extent to which this physical shape diversity has changed in response to environmental factors. Findings will better inform interpretations of Native American origins and colonization and diversity among living Native Americans, as well as general biological adaptation in modern humans. New standards for reconstructing stature and assessing morphological diversity in archaeological populations will be developed and made available to other researchers. Additionally, the research conducted in this study will assist in completing the graduate student training for Mr. Auerbach.