A Geometric Morphometric Study of Regional Craniofacial Variation in Mexico

Spanish speaking populations in the USA have long been categorised under the umbrella term ‘Hispanic’, which is a cultural construct. The term Hispanic ignores the unique ethnohistories and biological variation among Hispanic groups with various European, African and indigenous American influences. Considerable heterogeneity has been identified in pre‐contact America and has continued to influence the cultural and biological compositions of various regions today. The purpose of this research is to examine biological variation in Mexico, which was influenced by indigenous migration patterns and the Old World conquests of the Americans. Using multivariate statistics, this paper compares 16 three‐dimensional craniometric landmarks of samples from northern Central Mexico, northern Yucatan and western Mexico to examine the regional biological variation present in Mexico in both prehistoric and historic groups and also compares Mexican, Spanish and African American groups to examine patterns of Old World conquests. Multivariate statistics detected significant group differences for both size and shape (centroid size, p