We’re delighted to congratulate Dr. Jakob Sedig, whose co-authored paper was recently published in the journal Antiquity!
Dr. Sedig and his colleague’s work, “High levels of consanguinity in a child from Paquimé, Chihuahua, Mexico,” reports on ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis from a child burial in Paquimé, also known as Casas Grandes, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the political and ceremonial center of the so-called “Northwest/Southwest” region of the Americas (Mexican Northwest/U.S. Southwest). Their aDNA analysis reveals the close genetic relationship of the child’s parents and suggests the burial context reflects a family’s attempts at consolidating and legitimizing their social standing in Paquimé’s community.
Paquimé dates to 1200-1450 A.D. and was the vibrant precontact multicultural hub of the Northwest/Southwest region, containing approximately 1,100 rooms, multi-story buildings, at least two ballcourts, plazas, and cultural objects numbering in the millions indicating a strong trade presence and a macaw-breeding community. Despite many decades of archaeological interest, some of it pointing to an exclusive ancestor worship cult that legitimized power through sacrifice, many questions about Paquimé remain, including the nature of its social hierarchy and how its inhabitants were biologically related to each other and their neighbors.
The ”House of the Well” is a building thought to have had significant ceremonial importance due to the ritual objects within and its association with a sacred underground walk-in well. Documented objects within include turquoise, salt, copper ore, effigy vessels, and the highest concentration of macaw sacrifices throughout Paquimé. It is here that a biologically male child aged two to five years of age was found placed on top of a sandstone disc, wrapped around the base of a roof-support post.
This child burial is unique in several ways. The context of a child being buried and arranged in this fashion within the House of the Well was unique at Paquimé and the broader Northwest/Southwest. Furthermore, Dr. Sedig and his colleagues identified long runs of homozygosity (ROH) during aDNA analysis, indicating closely-related parents. In Dr. Sedig’s words, “This individual has one of the highest runs of homozygosity values of all published ancient individuals in the Western Hemisphere…This means that the child had parents who were more closely related than first cousins.” The parents may have been half-siblings or some other pairing of kin who share between 25-50% of their genome (the cultural taboo against relations between closely-related kin often did not apply to elites within many ancient societies).
Dr. Sedig and his colleagues argue the data from this child burial indicates the child was a victim of human sacrifice, and specifically a rare example of close relative mating between elites for ritual sacrifice; Paquimé’s elite class may have tried to consolidate power by establishing mating pairs of close relatives. The data and context, including the high level of consanguinity and burial context, imply that elites at Paquimé felt sacrificing a child of two closely-related individuals was especially powerful, particularly for the scenario of consecrating a ritually-significant building.
We’d like to congratulate Dr. Sedig and his colleagues on the publication of this exciting aDNA analysis shedding light on the many enigmas of Paquimé’s social structure.
Read Dr. Sedig and his colleagues’ paper for free here.
Read Dr. Sedig’s blog post for Antiquity here.