Wear on the deciduous molars in a Mediaeval English human population: a study using crown height

Abstract

This work comprises a study of mandibular deciduous molar wear in an archaeological population using measurement of crown height. The aims are twofold. Firstly, to investigate the nature of the relationship between wear on the deciduous molars and dental age. Secondly, to evaluate, using crown height, two existing methods of recording deciduous molar wear: the measurement of the percent of the occlusal surface made up of exposed dentine described by Clement and Freyne (2012), and the ordinal wear stage method of Dawson and Robson Brown (2013). The study material is immature skeletal remains (N = 76, dental age range 15 months–11.5 yrs) from a British Mediaeval site. Results show that crown height bears an approximately linear relationship with dental age for both first and second deciduous molars, and regression residuals are homoscedastic suggesting little inter-individual variation in wear rates. The second molar wears at a faster rate and its crown height bears a closer relationship with dental age. In the second molar, percent dentine exposure bears a non-linear relationship with dental age and with crown height, and for both molars the regression residuals of percent dentine exposed upon dental age are heteroscedastic. The ordinal wear stages of Dawson and Robson Brown (2013) are strongly correlated with dental age but different wear stages may correspond to dissimilar increments of crown height. Molar crown height is a sensitive and direct measure of occlusal wear, and its homoscedastic, linear relationship with dental age facilitates controlling for the effects of age when dental wear is used to study childhood diet in archaeological populations.