Ancestral Puebloan mtDNA in context of the greater southwest

Ancient DNA (aDNA) was extracted from the human remains of seventy-three individuals from the Tommy and Mine Canyon sites (dated to PI-II and PIII, respectively), located on the B-Square Ranch in the Middle San Juan region of New Mexico. The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroups of 48 (65.7%) of these samples were identified, and their frequency distributions were compared with those of other prehistoric and modern populations from the Greater Southwest and Mexico. The haplogroup frequency distributions for the two sites were statistically significantly different from each other, with the Mine Canyon site exhibiting an unusually high frequency of haplogroup A for a Southwestern population, indicating the possible influence of migration or other evolutionary forces. However, both sites exhibited a relatively high frequency of haplogroup B, typical of Southwestern populations, suggesting continuity in the Southwest, as has been hypothesized by others (8, 9, 29, 45 and 57). The first hypervariable region of twenty-three individuals (31.5%) was also sequenced to confirm haplogroup assignments and compared with other sequences from the region. This comparison further strengthens the argument for population continuity in the Southwest without a detectable influence from Mesoamerica.     

Matéo Maximoff's La Septième fille: A Roma Testimony of Internment and Assimilation

Set in the internment camp at Lannemezan where the author and his family spent two years, Matéo Maximoff's La Septième fille gives a voice to a minority group that has suffered from negative stereotypes since its arrival in France in the Middle Ages. In that work, Maximoff, the first authentic Roma novelist, blends folklore and oral tradition with historical fact, chronicling the conditions in the camp at Lannemezan even as he spins a supernatural tale worthy of the most gifted of conteurs. Informed by historical sources and ethnographic studies, this article suggests that La Septième fille may be read as a metaphor for the internment of the Roma by the Vichy regime and the policies aimed at ‘socialising’ and forcing them to become sedentary, policies that began during the Third Republic and that continued well into the twentieth century. La Septième fille is one of the rare literary works (along with Didier Daeninckx's La Route du Rom, 2003) to treat the little-known Vichy initiative of interning Roma—the majority of whom were French citizens—in 31 camps around France.