Biological Relationships of Southern Ontario Woodland Peoples - The Evidence of Discontinuous Cranial Morphology

A synthesis of biological relationships during the Woodland period of southern Ontario prehistory is presented. The database consists of a battery of discontinuous nonmetric cranial traits which is used to compute C.A.B. Smith’s Mean Measure of Divergence (MMD) between 17 large (N>20 crania) Woodland samples. The research design tests a series of hypotheses formulated from a review of previous skeletal and archaeological studies in the research area. The main strategy is to eliminate those factors potentially biased toward producing Type I or Type II statistical errors and emphasize the selection of an appropriate battery of traits to compare the samples, since inappropriate data would ruin attempts to estimate biological distance from the start. Published in English.