Anthropology

The Florida Anthropological Student Association hosts colloquia featuring UF anthropology students’ research. Check out this Friday’s presentations at 2pm in 1208 Turlington Hall.

Bayesian analyses of >100 Yemeni mitochondrial genomes and implications for dispersals out of Africa

Deven N. Vyas is a third year graduate student in the University of Florida, Dept. of Anthropology and is under the mentorship of Dr. Connie J. Mulligan. His present research interests include early human migrations out of Africa and genetic introgression from archaic hominids into early modern humans.

The southern dispersal route (SDR) out of Africa argues early anatomically modern humans (AMH) crossed the Bab el-Mandeb strait into Yemen and followed the coast of the Indian Ocean into eastern Eurasia. If AMHs migrated along the SDR and left modern descendants, one expects older Yemeni clades in the human mitochondrial genome tree. Alternatively, if AMHs did not migrate along the SDR or did but did not leave modern Yemeni descendants, one expects younger clades instead.

Our Yemeni samples includes 90 genomes generated using indexed library sequencing on the Illumina HiSeq 2000 primarily from haplogroups L3, M1, and N1 and 23 Yemeni genomes previously generated using Sanger sequencing from a wider array of haplogroups. We targeted haplogroups L3, M, and N as the evolution of these haplogroups is associated with the first migrations out of Africa. We used BEAST v1.7 to generate time-measured phylogenies f or whole mitochondrial genomes to test for monophyly of Yemeni sequences and estimate the ages of Yemeni clades.

Our topologies show that Yemeni sequences are diverse across haplogroups L3, M1, and N1 generally polyphyletic or paraphyletic within their respective haplogroups. On a few occasions within studied haplogroups, we found clades of predominantly Yemeni sequences but limited evidence of strict monophyly. Clades were also found to be young ranging between 4-18 kya. Our results suggest no evidence for mitochondrial descendants of the SDR in modern Yemen; however, high levels of diversity and close relationships of Yemeni sequences to both African and Eurasian sequences reinforce Yemen as a nexus between Africa and Eurasia

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Changing Food Practices During Spanish Conquest of Peru

Sarah Kennedy is a 2nd year MA student studying zooarchaeology in Colonial Peru.

This talk will present an overview of my MA project, which focused on analyzing 10,000 animal bone fragments from the archaeological site of Carrizales in Northern Peru. I use faunal remains collected from different contexts of the site to assess changing diet and food procurement strategies (e.g. hunting, fishing, animal rearing) during the Spanish Conquest in Peru. Preliminary faunal data show a change in meat consumption during the Colonial Period, where local people ate less fish and Andean domesticates (llamas and guinea pigs) and began eating newly introduced Eurasian domesticates such as chicken, goose, pig, sheep, and goats. This change is hypothesized to have been due to many factors, such as local demographic collapse, shifting labor and tribute demands, and environmental changes.