Abstract
This article presents research currently being conducted in the field of dental anthropology at the Department of Anthropology and Ecology of the University of Geneva, Switzerland. The first author, S. Eades, is carrying out a doctoral thesis on the familiality of dental morphological traits and their use as “familial” indicators in the case of multivariate and univariate analyses of interindividual distances. Her methods are based on the modern collection of Burlington (Ontario), and her results shall be applied to the Protohistorical necropolis of Kerma (Sudan) and the Neolithic multiple graves of Chamblandes (Switzerland). The second author, J. Desideri, began her graduate work on an interpopulational comparison of Swiss Neolithic populations based on their dental morphology. She is currently undertaking a doctoral thesis on the same problem, but tackling the whole of Europe.
Highlights
This article presents research currently being conducted in the field of dental anthropology at the Department of Anthropology and Ecology of the University of Geneva, Switzerland
Eades became interested in dental non-metric traits during her preparation of a Master’s degree at the University of Bradford, England (Eades, 1997). On her return to the University of Geneva in 1998, she undertook a doctoral thesis2 on these traits, bearing on their familial determination and the calculation of interindividual distances
Desideri began her graduate work on an interpopulational comparison of Swiss Neolithic populations based on their dental morphology (Desideri, 2001)
Summary
Different studies have shown that there is a strong genetic component in the distribution of at least some dental characters, since there is a higher concordance between monozygotic twins than between dizygotic twins (Biggerstaff, 1973, 1979; Berry, 1978; Scott and Potter, 1984; Kaul et al, 1985; Townsend et al, 1988, 1992) Given this strong genetic determination, two types of studies have been carried out: the search for the mode of inheritance of these traits, and the calculation of their heritability. It does not tell us what portion of an individual’s phenotype can be associated with its heredity or its environment (Falconer, 1960, 1965) It is chrono-specific, population-specific, and requires a polygenic mode of inheritance, which, as we have seen, is not always the case for dental traits She shall study multiple burials in stone cists from the Swiss Neolithic necropolis of Chamblandes (Moinat and Simon, 1986)
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