CRANIAL VARIATION IN THE IBERIAN PENINSULA AND THE BALEARIC-ISLANDS -INFERENCES ABOUT THE HISTORY OF THE POPULATION

A multivariate analysis of four prehistoric and nine historic populati ons from the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands with large sample sizes (n > 30 individuals for the neurocranium and n > 15 for the faci al skeleton) is presented, considering 874 male and 557 female skulls and using 20 craniometric measurements, Cluster analyses have been und ertaken using the squared Euclidean distance as a measure of proximity and the average linkage between groups (UPGMA), and neighbor-joining algorithms as a branching method, and a bootstrap analysis was used to assess the robustness of the clustering topology. The study was compl emented with a principal coordinate analysis and with the application of the Mantel test to measure the degree of correspondence between the information furnished by the female and the male samples. The analyse s show that the main source of morphometric variability in the Iberian Peninsula is the Basque population. The second source of variation is provided by two populations (Muslims and Jews), different from the re st from an archaeological and cultural point of view, and can probably be attributed to influences from sub-Saharan Africa. The massive depo rtations of the Jews in 1492 and of the Moors between the 15th and 17t h centuries may have erased this source of variability from the presen t population of the Iberian Peninsula. The remaining studied populatio ns, including samples from Castile, Cantabria, Andalusia, Catalonia an d Balearic Islands, are grouped together, showing a notable morphologi cal homogeneity, despite their temporal and geographic heterogeneity. These results are in general agreement with those obtained in syntheti c maps, by analyzing multiple genetic markers. In such studies, the Ba sque population is described as the main source of genetic variability , not only in the Iberian Peninsula, but also in Western Europe. (C) 1 996 Wiley-Liss, Inc.