Abstract
The aim of this multidisciplinary study, which involved a team of archaeologists, odontologists, biologists, is to examine a set of dental health indicators, including caries, tooth wear, and enamel hypoplasia of a III millennium BC sample from the burial site of Scaba ’e Arriu (Siddi, South Sardinia), in order to evaluate the dental health status and the diet. Our purpose is to depict a timeline of dental health in Sardinia from prehistory to the present day, starting with a focus on a Copper Age population. Caries, dental wear, and enamel hypoplasia of 259 permanent teeth were evaluated. It was not possible to assign sex and age of each tooth because of the lack of bony support, lost due to taphonomy factors. 14,7% of Scaba‘e Arriu’s samples were affected by carious lesions, with greater involvement of the posterior teeth (12,7% against 1,9% of anterior ones). Interproximal caries was the most frequent. Dental wear affected 77,8% of the teeth, and its presence is preponderant over caries’ rate. The high percentage of dental wear suggests a diet based on abrasive foods. Further studies are necessary to delineate more accurately the modus vivendi, the nutrition, and, consequently, the health status of this sample.
Highlights
The international scientific literature on dental paleopathology has until now focused on the reconstruction of oral health from osteoarchaeological samples starting from the presence of caries, inflammatory odontogenic lesions, periodontal diseases, and dental wear [13]
Other studies have applied imaging diagnostics more commonly used in health check [14] to investigate pathologies that cannot be otherwise found on a sample or morphometric features in dental evolution [15]
The tomb was built in Late Neolithic period (4000-3300 BC) and reused in the later Copper Age by people of Filigosa-Abealzu’s archaeological facies (3300-2700 BC, phase A) and Monte Claro’s (27002200 BC, phase B) culture
Summary
Teeth are excellent indicators of an individual’s health, diet, and lifestyle. For this reason, in recent years, the study of teeth has been spreading within the historicalarchaeological disciplines [1-6]. Other studies have applied imaging diagnostics more commonly used in health check [14] to investigate pathologies that cannot be otherwise found on a sample or morphometric features in dental evolution [15] Another object of study is represented by past dietary habits, for which are analyzed common lesions on tooth’s supporting tissues, enamel and dentine [16], and isotopic [17-20], molecular [21], and palaeobotanical data [18,22]. Researches have been performed on tooth’s macro and micro-wear [23][24] and on the dental calculus [25] It has, recently become an important source for ancient DNA studies with various purposes, i.e., depicting the evolution of the oral microbiota [26], getting more details on the human genome [27], investigating early eating habits [28], detecting and characterizing pathogenic microorganisms that have caused historical epidemics [29], reconstructing the demographic history of ancient populations [30]
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