Our next meeting is this Thursday October 10th at the Museum of Ontario Archaeology. 

This month’s talk by Dr. J.E. Molto, Professor Emeritus, Western University is titled Bioarchaeological Analysis of Two Child Burials from Canada De  La Huertita (BC111), Baja California, Sur, Mexico. Dr. Molto describes two child skeletons (burials 6 and 7) from a cave burial site (BC 111) in the Cape Region of Baja California, Sur that were excavated by William Massey in the late 1940s.

This mortuary cave contained the remains of 13 individuals, 8 adults and 5 children. Three calibrated AMS radiocarbon dates from palm fronds and a human burial indicate that this cave could have been used for an extended period of time circa 1340-1650 A.D. which overlaps the historic period in the Cape Region which dates to 1533/34. Burials 6 and 7, the focus of this paper, where children found together on the same palm bed suggesting that they may have been related. One, burial 7, was a primary interment associated with many artifacts, while the other (burial 6) was a non-red painted secondary burial who died some unknown time before burial 7, but the radiocarbon dates indicate they were contemporaries. Their ages are respectively 5 and 3 years.

The hypothesis that they are closely related is supported by statistical analyses of both morphogenetic nonmetric traits and mtDNA. The same mtDNA profiles (for ~ 200 bp of HV1) only tells us that they shared the same mitochondrial lineage and could be sibs or maternal cousins. Future molecular research using mini STRs and SNPs analyzed via next generation sequencing may help clarify their genetic relationships to each other and to other Las Palmas burials.

Doors open at 7pm and the meeting will begin at 7:30pm.

All are welcome and cookies and juice will be provided.
See you there!