Abstract
Between 1979 and 1989 the skeletal remains of 21 adults and 38 children, yielding 317 permanent and 134 deciduous teeth, were recovered at Tell Leilan, Syria, the site of a major urban center during the emergence of complex state society in northern Mesopotamia in the mid-third millennium BC. Tooth crown dimensions (faciolingual and mesiodistal diameters, total crown area, and molar crown area) are presented and the last two serve as the primary units of comparison for a diachronic interpretation of tooth size variation in the ancient Near East. Both permanent and deciduous dental data support the pattern of dental reduction since the Middle Paleolithic that has been documented for Asia and Europe. The total crown areas for the permanent and deciduous dental samples, 1189 mm2 and 497 mm2 respectively, place this archaeological population at the smaller end of the crown area scale for the Near East; smaller in size than nearby Paleolithic and Neolithic populations. Given the paucity of odontological data for this area, this study contributes to the odontometric history of Mesopotamia and as a summary compilation and comparison of previously conducted odontometric work as it relates to the phenomenon of dental reduction within the ancient Near East.
Highlights
Between 1979 and 1989 the skeletal remains of 21 adults and 38 children, yielding 317 permanent and 134 deciduous teeth, were recovered at Tell Leilan, Syria, the site of a major urban center during the emergence of complex state society in northern Mesopotamia in the mid-third millennium BC
This paper presents the results of an odontometric analysis of human skeletal remains from the northern Mesopotamian site of Tell Leilan, Syria, and compares these results to odontometric data from other regions and time periods of the Near East in order to examine diachronic dental size variation
Documentation of dental reduction trends based on odontometric observation of archaeological populations has been achieved in a number of areas of the world for postPaleolithic Asia (Brace, 1978; Lukacs and Hemphill, 1991) and Upper Paleolithic-Mesolithic Europe (Frayer, 1977, 1978), but more work in regions and time periods previously unexamined by dental anthropologists will enable researchers to more accurately understand the evolutionary processes involved in hominid dental reduction, one of the most widely reported, and hotly debated trends in the study of human evolution (Brace, 1963, 1964, 1978; Brace et al, 1987, 1991; Calcagno, 1989; Gibson and Calcagno, 1989; Kieser, 1990; Macchiarelli and Bondioli, 1984)
Summary
Between 1979 and 1989 the skeletal remains of 21 adults and 38 children, yielding 317 permanent and 134 deciduous teeth, were recovered at Tell Leilan, Syria, the site of a major urban center during the emergence of complex state society in northern Mesopotamia in the mid-third millennium BC. Analyses of ancient Near Eastern dentitions are sparsely represented in the literature, whether concerning pathology (e.g., Krogman, 1940; Carbonell, 1966), non-metric traits (e.g., Dahlberg, 1960; Rathbun, 1972), or metric variation (e.g., Macchiarelli, 1989; Rosenzweig and Zilberman, 1967, 1969) One reason for this may be that excavations of human remains at such classic sites as Kish (Mackay, 1925; Watelin and Langdon, 1934), and Ur (Wooley, 1934), were conducted in the early first half of the twentieth century, a time when studies of the teeth were not considered essential components of skeletal analysis. This study, is intended as a contribution to the odontometric history of Mesopotamia and as a summary compilation and comparison of previously conducted odontometric work as it relates to the phenomenon of dental reduction within the ancient Near East
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