Bioarchaeology

Our field of interest focuses on the origin, biocultural evolution and diversity of humans through time and space. It includes the study of extinct, ancient and extant populations, always based on their socio-cultural contexts. When dealing with past populations we study their bones, teeth and mummified tissues, among others. This helps knowing their way of life, their diet, health, demographic structure (sometimes...), the burden of daily activities, their biological relation to other groups and also some aspects of their social structure.

From Australopithecus to ourselves: 6 million years of evolutionary history.

Our projects aim at answering questions on the way of life, the subsistence and their interdependency with changes in social structure. Using a bioarchaeological approach we study social complexification in groups that inhabited coastal ecosystems of South America between 8000 and 1000 years ago.

Therefore, we compare the frequency and severity of numerous osseous, dental, chemical and physical characteristics between different human groups using two main research avenues. These are paleopathology and paleodiet that, integrated with archaeological and microevolutionary data, help to understand how social complexification occurred and which the factors responsible for the development of civilization were. The results drawn from Bioarchaeology and integrated with archaeological data shed light on the variables implicated in the development of highly complex civilizations at the Pacific coast, whereas at the Atlantic shore the societies enjoyed a very long-lived and apparently much more stable way of life (although without the hallmarks of grand civilizations).