Perinatal burials at pre‐Hispanic noncemetery sites in Gran Canaria: Tophet, infanticide, or natural mortality?

Abstract

In this paper, we perform the first multidisciplinary study of perinatal burials at a pre-Hispanic domestic site in Gran Canaria. For that, we carried out bioanthropological analyses, the genetic determination of the molecular sex of the individuals, and the contextualization of their chronological and cultural affiliations. To date, these remains had been associated to a local re-interpretation of a Phoenician-Punic tophet or as evidence of female infanticide within the mechanisms of demographic control of the ancient Canarians. However, these proposals did not take into account the recurrence of this type of human remains outside the normative cemeteries of the indigenous population or considered the demographic profile of coetaneous necropolises. In the light of the age of death and the molecular sex of the individuals, and the results obtained from the taphonomic and chronological analyses, we propose an alternative historical scenario, directly linked to high perinatal mortality rates and the development of specific burial practices for those individuals that died around the time of birth.

The genomic history of the indigenous people of the Canary Islands

“…We analyzed genome-wide data from 49 individuals from the CIP, including 40 newly generated samples and 9 whole-genome sequencing data from previously published studies 15 , 21 . With this larger dataset, we have shed light on the prehistory of North Africa.…”

“… a Available ancient whole-genome data from western North Africa obtained from the literature: Taforalt 2 , Kehf al Baroud and Ifri n’Amr ou Moussa 5 ; decontextualized individuals from Tenerife and Gran Canaria 15 , and individuals from Cendro site in Gran Canaria 21 . b Geographical adscription of the archaeological sites considered in this study.…”

“…Previously published genome-wide data from the CIP included five decontextualized individuals from the islands of Tenerife and Gran Canaria, ranging from the 7 th to the 15 th centuries CE 15 , from a 19 th century private collection conserved at the Anatomical Museum Edinburgh University with no archaeological information; and four from the Cendro site in Gran Canaria dated around the 12 th century CE 21 . Here, we generated 9 medium to low-coverage genomes (5.82X–0.36X) by shotgun sequencing and genome-wide data from another 31 individuals by in-solution capture from the CIP (Supplementary Data 1 ).…”

“…The rest of the indigenous Canarians included in this study were obtained from their ENA accession no. PRJEB86458 15 and PRJEB46005 21 . The human reference sequence build 37 (GRCh37/hg19 [ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/assembly/GCF_000001405.13/ ]) and the Revised Cambridge Reference Sequence (rCRS; NC_012920 [ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/251831106 ]) were downloaded from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI).…”

Can material of a putatively extinct new species of Ruta (Rutaceae), preserved with mummies, provide new knowledge about evolution in the Canary Islands flora?

“…2021a), palaeoentomology (Lopez-Dos Santos & al. 2022) and bioanthropology (Alberto-Barroso & al. 2022b; Delgado-Darias 2022), in parallel with activities combining investigation and the transfer of knowledge to a public audience (Delgado-Darias & al.…”