Intentional dental modification: assessment of a historical museum specimen from the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Abstract

Intentional dental modification has been practised across Africa for the past 10,000 years; three variations have been noted: filing, chipping and evulsion. Of these, dental filing is the most prolific. Restyling of the teeth for aesthetic socio-cultural reasons is a practice with both a wide-ranging geographical trend and a broad temporal scale. This article presents the assessment of one specimen held within the Odontological Collection at the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) that displays significant reshaping: four modified maxillary incisors from one individual, reportedly from the Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which have been filed into pronounced points. Observations have been made on the impact of modifying human teeth ante-mortem, and the resultant reaction of the dental tissues to invasive reshaping.