Morphometrics and Compositional Classes. The Stuy of Anthropomorphic Sculptures from Teotihuacan (México)

Geometric morphometrics is the study of the form and/or shape of objects, or subjects, capturing their geometry. Within the landmark methods developed so far, Euclidean Distance Matrix Analysis (EDMA) is a coordinate-free method that enables the study of form avoiding the nuisance parameters of translation and rotation existing in the landmark coordinates data. However, EDMA exhibits several weaknesses in the study of shape. The present paper links EDMA with compositional data analysis in what is here called Compositional EDMA and illustrates the present approach with the study of anthropomorphic sculptures from the pre-Hispanic site of Teotihuacan (Mexico