The aim of this work is to explore the pattern of craniofacial morphometric
variation and the relationships among five prehistoric
Sardinian groups dated from Late Neolithic to the Nuragic Period
(Middle and Late Bronze Age), in order to formulate hypotheses
on the peopling history of Sardinia. Biological relationships with
coeval populations of central peninsular Italy were also analysed to
detect influences from and towards extra-Sardinian sources. Furthermore,
comparison with samples of contemporary populations
from Sardinia and from continental Italy provided an indication of
the trend leading to the final part of the peopling history. Finally,
Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic samples were included in the
analyses to compare the prehistoric Sardinians with some of their
potential continental ancestors. The analysis is based on multivariate
techniques including Mahalanobis D2 distance, non-parametric
multidimensional scaling (MDS) and principal component analysis
(PCA). The results showed the tendency to progressive differentiation
between Sardinian groups and peninsular Italian groups,
with the possible exception of a discontinuity showed by the Bonnànaro
(Early Bronze Age) Sardinian sample. Several aspects of
the morphological results were found to agree with the current
genetic evidence available for the present-day Sardinian population
and a Nuragic sample: (1) biological divergence between the Sardinian
and peninsular Italian populations; (2) similarity/continuity
among Neolithic, Bronze Age and recent Sardinians; (3) biological separation between the Nuragic and Etruscan populations; (4) contribution
of a Palaeo-Mesolithic gene pool to the genetic structure
of current Sardinians
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