Chapter 12 The Dentist and the Archeologist: The Role of Dental Anthropology in North American Bioarcheology

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323Chapter 12

The Dentist and the Archaeologist: The Role of Dental Anthropology in North American Bioarchaeology

Jerome C. Rose and Dolores L. Burke

I. INTRODUCTION

In the increasingly interdisciplinary and interdependent academic world, it has become clear that no discipline is an island — that, in fact, formerly rigid boundaries are displaying a considerable amount of elasticity that encourages interaction. An example of the new approaches may be found in the relationship of the classic field of archaeology, dating to the 19th century, and the newer study of bioarchaeology, originating in the last third of the 20th century. This chapter examines an activity that contributes to the broader world of archaeology via the channel of bioarchaeology: dental anthropology, the study of teeth in humans. This historical review concentrates on the development of dental anthropology with respect to American archaeology and osteology (after British beginnings), and the history would be somewhat different if we had included the extensive literature from other parts of the world.

Teeth have been studied for thousands of years. The physicians of the pharoahs of ancient Egypt examined and ministered to the teeth of their ruler gods, and in so doing kept records of their research and treatment that would assist their successors. Indeed, the study of teeth has always been a case of inquiry 324and application: What causes the condition of this tooth? What can be done about it? In modern times the process has been expanded, and rather than simply describing anomalies found in old skeletons, dental researchers have used available skeletal collections to answer questions about the present. This unique orientation made the results of their research relevant to other dental researchers and to archeologists interested in reconstructing the way of life of past peoples.

We know that intellectual history has demonstrated that there is a common progress in the development of science and that even diverse fields have followed a common historical path, with leaps of progress occurring at about the same time. Thus it was no surprise for us to find that major paradigm shifts and methodological innovations in the development of dental anthropology coincided, for example, with temporal schemes proposed by both Willey and Sabloff (1993) for American archaeology and Jarcho (1966b) for paleopathology. As the temporal divisions in these schemes do not differ by more than 5 years and we are relating dental anthropology and archaeology, we employ the schema proposed by Willey and Sabloff (1993) to organize our history of dental anthropology. Our divisions are Classificatory–Descriptive (1840–1914), Classificatory–Historical (1914–1940), Contextual–Functional (1940–1960), and Modern (1960–). Using these temporal divisions to discuss the development of dental anthropology permits us to better understand its contribution to archaeology and the birth of bioarchaeology. Table I shows a comparison of activity among archeologists, osteologists, and paleopathologists within these periods.

Within our discussion along temporal lines, we use data categories and recognize a standard research sequence. There are four data categories that encompass the vast majority of dental anthropology research: dental disease (specifically caries), dental wear, developmental defects of the enamel and dentin, and dental morphology and measurement. These data categories have been combined in various ways to make contributions to three interpretive themes: dietary reconstruction, analysis of childhood disease and stress patterns, and reconstruction of genetic relationships. The body of research, encompassing data categories, reflects a standard research sequence in stages of plausibility, methodology, and application, as follows.

A. PLAUSIBILITY

The researcher believes that an interesting idea could work. This is represented by a publication that demonstrates, for example, that microscopic scratches on teeth could be used to reconstruct the physical consistency of food eaten in the past. Generally, the Classificatory–Descriptive division in our review illustrates a stage of plausibility.

325Table I

Temporal Divisions of Archeology, Osteology, and Paleopathology, 1840 to Present

Period	Archeology	Osteology	Paleopathology
Classificatory–Descriptive (1840–1914)	Describing architecture and artifacts while developing typological systems	Developing racial categories from cranial types	Discovering that pathological lesions found in ancient skeletal material can be diagnosed
Classificatory–Historical (1914–1940)	Developing methods for ordering sites and artifacts in time	Cranial typology continues to dominate	Identifying first and oldest cases of specific diseases, applying new methods from clinical medicine to analysis of ancient materials
Contextual–Functional (1940–1960)	Focusing on context and function	Focus on cranial typology attacked within profession; “New Physical Anthropology” (Washburn, 1951)	Becoming interested in problems of entire populations (Jarcho, 1966b)
Modern (1960–)	Shifting to problem-oriented, explanatory research	Publication of Dental Anthropology (Brothwell, 1963b); birth of bioarchaeology (Blakely, 1977)	Beginning shift to paleoepidemiology

B. METHODOLOGY

Numerous studies focus on developing and refining methods of data collection and analysis that would lead to reliable diet reconstruction from microscopic scratches. In the study of the past this stage must also incorporate what in archaeology would be called enthnographic analogy. Here clinical research, studying living nonindustrial peoples, and even animal experimentation and observation in the wild are used to establish the relationship between the specific feature or condition of the teeth and its causal agent, e.g., looking at the relationship between specific and known foods and the scratches produced on the teeth. This interpretive stage is a necessary one before data from the past can be interpreted because in the study of the past we must infer the presence of the causal agent from the evidence or impact that it has left behind on the skeleton. The stage of methodology is best expressed in the Classificatory–Historical period, with some further evidence in the Contextual–Functional period.

326C APPLICATION

This final stage is the development of research methods where collected data can be analyzed in such a way that we can progress to a higher level of providing explanation and understanding process. Here we have reached the stage where data can be routinely employed in bioarcheological analysis where we are interested in problems such as the origin of agriculture. This routine application of methods comes in two forms. First, we have the routine application of the method in the analysis of a single-site, specific skeletal sample, where all possible data are collected from the skeletons. These usually descriptive reports, often added as chapters or appendices in archeological publications, are the building blocks of synthetic bioarchaeology research. Second, we have the application of the methodology to the solving of a particular problem. Here one or more methods are employed to collect data from many skeletal series to look at one phenomenon, such as determining the dates of earliest agriculture in the American midwest. This final stage is most clearly shown in the Modern period.

Examining the history of dental anthropology within the temporal scheme borrowed from Willey and Sabloff (1993) and the proposed sequence of methods development, we demonstrate the unique contributions that dental anthropology has made to the development of bioarchaeology. We contend that, unlike other medical professionals and osteologists, dentists and dental researchers have a long history of problem-oriented research using ancient human skeletal remains. The problems being addressed often may have been simple ones, but because the research focused on basic biological processes, dental research has for more than a century made substantive contributions to our understanding of ancient biology and culture, using human skeletons recovered by archeologists.

In this short chapter it is not possible for us to provide a complete review of the literature for each of our methodology themes; instead we employ more selective citations to document the development of dental anthropology, specifically focusing on its role as a major contributor to the development of bioarchaeology. Fortunately, comprehensive literature reviews have been published for each of the dental anthropology data categories. For an extensive bibliography and a more detailed history of dental caries research and its use by dental anthropologists, the reader is referred to Powell (1985) and Larsen (1997), and also to Caselitz (1998), who provides a survey of the worldwide distribution of caries over time. For a history of dental wear studies, there are the contributions of Molnar (1972), Powell (1985), and Rose and Ungar (1998). A history of developmental dental defects can be found in Goodman and Rose (1990), while for a more detailed history of the development of morphological studies the reader is referred to Scott and Turner (1988, 1997).

327II. CLASSIFICATORY–DESCRIPTIVE 1840–1914

While archeologists, osteologists, and paleopathologists were describing materials, developing typologies and categories, and determining the possibility of analysis, dental researchers were engaged in their own specialized attention to human teeth. Meetings of the Odontological Society of Great Britain were alive with discussion and great debates and one of the most frequently asked questions was “Why are diseases of the teeth more common now in civilized life then they formerly were?” (Mummery, 1870:73). Even at this early date dental researchers sought answers to this question using problem-oriented research to study excavated skeletal remains of past peoples. Is this not by definition what we call bioarchaeology today?

Mummery examined variation in dental decay between groups that varied by diet and culture using a sample of teeth from the skulls of 203 ancient Britains, 143 Romano-Britains, 76 Anglo-Saxons, and 36 ancient Egyptians, in addition to another 1175 skulls from 18 modern groups on other continents. He demonstrated that dental decay increased with civilization and decreased when more primitive conditions returned. For example, when comparing the teeth of Anglo-Saxons to the Romano-British he stated that “the simpler habits of the Anglo-Saxons, together with their nourishing food” produced higher quality teeth and less disease (Mummery, 1870:33). It was not too long after Mummery’s work that Miller (1883a) proposed that acids produced by the fermentation of carbohydrates by bacteria are the primary cause of dental decay. Miller (1883b) did later temper this causal explanation by stating that imperfections in the structure of teeth permitted the acids to cause decay. It was only two decades later that it was confirmed that indeed it was the fermentation of sugar and starches that cause the destruction (Turner and Bennett, 1913).

It is true that some of Mummery’s explanations for the cause of caries were far wide of the mark, such as attributing the poor quality of British children’s teeth, hence prone to caries, to too much cerebral activity (i.e., studying) among the little tykes that was depriving their teeth of resources necessary for sound development. Here, although wrong, he was among the first to postulate that structural imperfections made modern teeth more prone to decay. This supposition led to 80 years of research on ancient and modern dental defects that laid the ground work for using them to reconstruct childhood stress patterns. There were a few strange interpretations in Mummery’s papers, but other conclusions were sound and have been supported repeatedly by more recent studies using larger samples with better temporal control. Hardwick (1960) employed data on 13,450 ancient British teeth to reproduce the same variation in caries frequencies over time as did Mummery, although he more correctly identified sugars and refined flour in the diet as the major variable, while still including defective dental development as a major contributor to increased decay. Using even larger 328samples and more sophisticated methods, Moore and Corbett demonstrated the same trends by time and culture while attributing increased decay to increased consumption of sugar and refined flours (e.g., Moore and Corbett, 1971, 1973, 1975; Corbett and Moore, 1976).

Mummery (1870:42) used modern skulls from around the world to demonstrate that the amount of sand and grit introduced into food during processing led to variation in the degree of tooth wear observed in both ancient and “primitive” teeth that contrasted greatly with the minimal wear on modern British teeth. Although his knowledge of what these nonwestern peoples were eating derived from the sometimes fanciful reports of explorers, this is in effect the use of ethnographic analogy. Some decades had to pass before methodologically sound studies of living hunter–gatherers and horticulturalists were conducted to verify his conclusions. Again Mummery led the way by concluding that the amount of dental wear seen on teeth is directly related to the types and consistency of the foods being eaten. Not content with looking at degree of wear, Mummery (1870:42) also noted oblique wear (when the occlusal surface becomes angled to the cheeks on the lower molars) and attributed it to the chewing of tough, hard foods. It was not until a century later that both Hinton (1981) and B. Holly Smith (1984) used variation in the angle of the occlusal wear plane to document the transition to agriculture with its attendant shift from hard to softer foods.

Mummery touched on other areas, such as the effect of disease, minerals in foods, and even medicines on dental development and increased susceptibility of teeth to decay. It was, however, not long before Berten (1895, cited in Sheldon et al., 1945) suggested that physiological disturbances are reflected in the dental microstructure. Black (1906) compared the occurrence of various surface and histological defects of the enamel to the occurrence of various local and systemic disturbances.

The fact that archeological teeth are amenable to histological/microscopic analysis was demonstrated by Professor C. S. Tomes (1892). While taking a short cut through a cemetery on his way to a meeting, Professor Tomes, still known for his contributions to dental development and histology (e.g., Tomes process of ameloblasts), found a tooth and took it home for analysis. He subsequently delivered a paper to the Odontological Society on the histology and postmortem changes that he observed in this tooth, laying the ground work for the study of ancient dental microstructure and taphonomy. Thus, when subsequent dental researchers pursued Mummery’s idea of the relationship of caries frequency and dental defects, they knew that ancient teeth could be sectioned and examined microscopically.

This long discussion of Mummery’s contributions to dental research and the development of bioarchaeology is not presented to establish his genius or farsightedness; on the contrary, we wish to point out that he was not unusual for 329his time, and all of these topics were discussed again and again at Odontological Society meetings, in Britain and elsewhere. We further contend that the study of ancient teeth was an integral part of this research enterprise of finding out why modern industrialized people suffered from extensive dental disease. We do, though, find that three of the four major data categories or research themes that we think characterize dental anthropology and bioarchaeology are to be found in Mummery’s article. First, variations in decay frequencies are related to variation in diet, providing the basis for using caries to document dietary change and offering a major tool for studying one of the great human revolutions, the transition to agriculture. Second, increased rates of decay might be due to defects or imperfect dental development, a notion that led to searching for variations in the quality of dental development among living peoples, as well as those from antiquity. This focus on developmental irregularities provided data needed to employ defects in dental development (e.g., hypoplasias, enamel microdefects, interglobular dentin) to reconstruct the patterns of childhood stress. Third, variation in dental wear was due to variation in diet, and analysis of both living and ancient teeth led to the use of dental attrition, at both gross and microscopic levels, for dietary reconstruction, with its first significant use being documentation of the transition to agriculture.

The research of Mummery and colleagues provided the foundation for using teeth as one source of data for the interpretation of ancient skeletons (i.e., the plausibility stage of research). There is no better place to see if indeed this research had any impact on the analysis of skeletons being excavated by archeologists than in the work of Aleš Hrdlička, curator at the Smithsonian Institution, father of American physical anthropology and the founder of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology in 1918. Hrdlička (1908b,c; 1909c,d; 1910; 1912d; 1913) produced osteological appendices on skeletons excavated by C. B. Moore in Arkansas and Louisiana, frequently reporting the presence and frequency of dental decay but never drawing any conclusions or inferences from these observations. In contrast, Turner and Bennett (1913), in examining ancient Egyptians (26–30 dynasties) excavated by Sir Flinders Petrie for Karl Pearson (the well-known statistician), compared their decay rate to that of modern people and attributed the ancient rate, which was three times lower than the modern, to the ancient Egyptian diet of rough bread with an absence of the refined carbohydrates that characterize the modern diet.

Mummery (1870) used only qualitative statements (e.g., extensive, more than, less than) to compare dental wear on his various skeletal samples, but soon afterward Broca (1879) produced a dental wear scoring technique that became employed extensively. Hrdlička (1908b, 1909c) used and reported scores based on Broca’s five-level scale, without citation, in his osteological appendices.

Despite the previously discussed innovative work on the relationship of wear and diet, Hrdlička (1908b:563) made, at best, minimal attempts at dietary 330reconstruction. For example, when he was reporting on crania from Arkansas excavated by C. B. Moore, he noted that dental wear was less than usual and stated that “their food was not coarse.” Rather than using variation in wear for dietary inferences as did Mummery, Turner, and Bennett, he employed the scheme as one of his methods for determining age-at-death. With the later publication of this method in his laboratory guide (Practical Anthropometry, Hrdlička, 1939), dental wear became, and remained, one of the primary means of determining age-at-death for American archeologists and physical anthropologists alike. As there were few reliable indicators of age available to osteologists and the dental wear method was easy to use, it acquired an emphasis for age determination and was seldom employed for dietary reconstruction. In these same osteological appendices, Hrdlička (1908b; 1909c) noted the high frequency of shovel-shaped incisors, stating that this is a characteristic of American Indians. His only other comment on these Native American teeth was that the number and morphology of the molar cusps resembled those found on people of European ancestry. These general observations were the first stirrings of dental morphology studies and eventually led to analysis of large comparative collections that developed into the seminal work on recording standards and the distribution of shovel-shaped incisors (Hrdlička, 1920c).

Thus, the Classificatory–Descriptive period came to a close with considerable progress having been made in establishing that teeth can be used effectively in the study of ancient skeletons. Mummery demonstrated that both dental disease and wear varied between two different diets, showing that it was possible to use these two data sets to reconstruct diets (i.e., plausibility stage). Also, the hypothesis that the high frequency of dental disease in modern populations was due to a decline in the quality of dental structure was firmly established. The testing of this hypothesis was to be the motivation for studying ancient teeth for more than 50 years.

In similar fashion, the first wear scoring system was developed and applied to determining the age-of-death, and this application guided the use of dental wear methods in osteological analysis for many decades to come.

Less well recognized as a useful tool was the modern understanding introduced by clinical dental research that dental decay resulted from the fermentation of carbohydrates by bacteria and that physiological disturbances could result in dental developmental defects. Skeletal analyses did not use any of these concepts for the reconstruction of ancient diets; there simply were not enough comparative data to make interpretations possible.

Finally, high frequencies of shovel-shaped incisors among Native Americans were recognized as a significant distinguishing characteristic, but the popularity of cranial morphology hindered any further advancements in dental morphology research.

331III. CLASSIFICATORY–HISTORICAL 1914–1940

This period between the beginning of the First and Second World Wars saw a settling-in process — a development of chronology and reinforcement of existing knowledge. In dental research there were numerous studies conducted by dentists that firmly established the relationship between increased sugar and refined carbohydrates in the diet and increased dental decay (e.g., Price, 1933). As was the case earlier, this understanding was applied to the interpretation of caries frequencies observed in ancient skeletal samples. The presence of dental decay in Paleolithic skeletons was reported by early researchers (Praeger, 1925; Vallois, 1936; Krogman, 1938). Ruffer (1920) discussed the dietary implications of the low decay and high wear rates among the predynastic Egyptians that he was studying. However, to go beyond simple statements to more detailed interpretation of ancient decay and wear rates required knowledge of variation among living nonindustrialized peoples, i.e., “ethnographic analogy.” These data were soon available from many parts of the world, including Africa, Australia, and the Arctic (e.g., Nicholls, 1914; Campbell, 1925; Orr and Gilkes, 1931; Waugh, 1928, 1931, 1933; Staz, 1938; Oranje et al., 1935; Schwartz, 1946). Campbell (1925), studying the native Australians, pointed out various features in the environment and diet that could have contributed to the advanced wear and minimal incidence of diseased teeth that he was recording. Buxton (1920) took special note of the soft diet of the African pastoralists and pointed out that they had considerably less dental wear than their agricultural neighbors. These associations of known diets and food processing technologies could then be used as analogies by the osteologists, enabling them to associate a pattern of wear and frequency of decay with specific information provided by archeologists about food remains and processing technologies, ultimately providing a reconstruction of the ancient diet (i.e., methodology stage).

The first significant study of skeletons (i.e., application stage) using this clinical and ethnographic knowledge base examined four different prehistoric Native American groups with different subsistence patterns (Leigh, 1925b). Leigh demonstrated that agriculturalists have more decay than hunter–gatherers, and the association of maize agriculture and frequent dental decay is firmly planted in the literature. In this classic study of the Sioux, Arikara, Indian Knoll, and Zuni, Leigh concluded that the Sioux had less wear than the others because they did not use stone grinders to prepare their maize for consumption. Leigh’s 1925 article had a major impact on the use of caries and wear for reconstructing ancient diets and is still one of the most frequently cited articles in the literature. This causal relationship of diet with wear and decay is exploited to establish that specific peoples were agricultural. For example, Christopherson and Pedersen (1939) examined caries differences between Neolithic and Bronze Age skeletons from Denmark in the investigation of agricultural origins.

332It is true that Leigh’s (and others’) study of caries and subsistence can be classified as good problem-oriented research in bioarchaeology, but the studies also represent the methodology stage where specialized studies of a small number of data categories focus on refining methods and establishing the validity of the interpretations. Mummery and others provided evidence that caries and wear could be used to interpret past diet. Ethnographic studies provided the details necessary for interpretation and use. We contend that the use of decay rates for subsistence reconstruction must also extend to the “field” portion of osteology where skeletal samples are subjected to comprehensive analysis. The use of caries and wear to reconstruct diet must also be found in the osteological appendices and monographs that are likely to be read and used by archeologists before this line of research can be considered to have had a role in the development of bioarchaeology. One seminal work in the early 20th century that in some respects represents an initial attempt at bioarchaeology is Hooton’s (1930) The Indians of the Pecos Pueblo. In the dental appendix to this monograph, Rihan attributed the 47.9% decay rate to a poor diet that resulted in imperfect structure, thus making the teeth susceptible to caries. Here the author employed the theme of inferior structure rather than an agricultural diet high in carbohydrates. Despite numerous studies linking decay and dietary carbohydrates, blaming substandard dental development and structure as postulated by Mummery (1870) and Miller (1883b) was simply not abandoned. Bodecker (1930) made histological sections of ancient Pueblo teeth and found that, despite many developmental imperfections, the teeth were free of decay. This same interpretation is present well into our next chronological period when Moorrees (1957:144, 150) in his study of living Aleuts stated that the variation in dental decay is due to the poor structure of teeth that resulted from the consumption of a modern diet rather than associating the increase in decay with the consumption of foods with high proportions of fermentable carbohydrates.

Lux (1935, 1936, 1937) was fairly typical of the writer of osteological reports and appendices when he reported the presence of dental disease in detail (here for skeletons from central Texas), but does not draw inferences concerning diet. Others of this era working in North America, such as Goldstein (1932) and Moodie (1929), also made inferences about diet from dental wear observed on the teeth of the skeletal remains. One constant theme was the presence or absence of stone food-processing utensils following the interpretation of Leigh; another theme was the confirmation of the inverse relationship between increased wear and decreased caries. All noted the cleansing effect of the coarse diets. Colquitt and Webb (1940), publishing in the Tri-State Medical Journal, associated matter-of-factly the high decay rates among the prehistoric Caddo with increased consumption of maize. Later Webb (1944) published an article in the American Journal of Orthodontics and Oral Surgery to focus the attention of the dental profession on the study of ancient skeletons, stating that his purpose was to dispel the mistaken 333belief that dental disease, especially caries, was not just a product of civilization but existed in the past.

As suggested earlier, we think that the reason that dental wear was not used extensively for dietary reconstruction in most early skeletal studies was that dental wear had another more immediate use: the determination of age-at-death. Simply put, there were few reliable indicators of age available for use, and dental wear systems such as Hrdlička’s were available and an easily used option. As an illustration, we can return to Hooton’s (1930:18) monograph on Pecos Pueblo where he listed dental wear as one of his aging techniques along with cranial sutures and general texture of the bone. It seems that in 1927, when the analysis was well advanced, Wingate Todd visited and assisted in aging 594 of the skeletons using his newly developed technique of pubic symphysis aging. It is primarily due to the lack of easily used options for aging that dental wear was retained as a widely used technique for age determination. Consequently, further advances in recording dental wear and in the use of dental wear for dietary reconstruction had to wait until the 1960s.

Hrdlička’s 1920 work on shovel-shaped incisors established solid recording standards and provided distribution data on the trait. He went on to make the link between Native Americans and Asians and suggested an Asian origin for Native Americans. His later study (Hrdlička, 1921b) addressed other morphological variations but had little impact due to the absence of rigorous recording standards. Research on morphological variation, among ancient peoples does not progress much beyond here. It is possible that Gregory’s (1922) comment that there was little morphological variation among races discouraged further application of dental morphology analysis to the study of ancient peoples and hence delayed the development of morphology methodology. In contrast, morphological analysis of fossil teeth blossomed and prospered. Similarly, the measurement of teeth had been standardized and some data were recorded (e.g., Campbell, 1925), but little was done with them. The reason for this lack of interest in dental morphology and metrics is abundantly clear when we realize that cranial types and measurements had established themselves as the quintessential means of establishing racial affiliations and reconstructing the migration histories of ancient populations (e.g., Hooton, 1930).

Researchers during this period between the World Wars made substantial contributions to two of our four research themes in dental anthropology. Clinical and ethnographic research clearly linked diets high in sugar and carbohydrates to increased decay. Ethnographic research showed solid correlations between the physical consistency of the diet and rates of dental wear. Significant problem-oriented research was conducted on ancient skeletons, which established that the consistency and content of ancient diets could be reconstructed from dental disease and wear rates. However, much progress was still needed in developing consistent methods for recording and analyzing data. Some of the site-specific 334osteological analyses were using dental disease to make inferences about diet, while the vast majority that recorded decay frequencies made no inferences. Dental wear observations remained primarily subjective, but were often used to postulate the presence or absence of stone grinders. One explanation for interest in the latter is that the presence of stone grinders could at least be confirmed by archeological excavation. Interest in the structural quality of the tooth and its relationship to dental disease remained strong, but little work on ancient teeth was conducted, probably due to the difficulty in making histological sections of ancient teeth, which were often relatively delicate. Dental morphology research progressed little other than using incisor shoveling to determine that the skeletons were Native Americans, which was self-evident. Further, cranial morphology and metrics held sway in the determination of genetic affiliations and documenting migrations.

As a result, the Classificatory–Historical period saw major advances being made for using both dental disease and wear for reconstructing ancient diets (i.e., methodology stage). Data collected from living nonindustrial peoples demonstrated that increased decay was associated with higher amounts of sugar and carbohydrates in the diet, while wear decreased with increased food processing. This use of ethnographic analogy was necessary to establish the association of specific diets with specific levels of dental disease and wear because without this knowledge, reconstructions of ancient diets was not possible. It then had to be demonstrated that this knowledge could be used effectively for establishing ancient dietary patterns, especially in differences between hunter–gatherers and agriculturalists.

By the end of the period, some osteologists were using dental disease and wear to establish the presence or absence of an agricultural subsistence adaptation (i.e., application stage). However, dental wear made a limited contribution because of its typical use in determining age; the availability of a simple system for associating specific stages of wear with specific age groups made this inevitable.

During this period, very little progress was made in the study of dental defects and morphology.

IV. CONTEXTUAL–FUNCTIONAL 1940–1960

The years during and immediately after World War II made up a period that was a time of both quiescence and transition in dental anthropology and osteology research as a whole. Great advances were being made in some areas of dental clinical research while little occurred in the application of this new knowledge to dental anthropology until the 1960s. Washburn’s (1951) article titled the “New Physical Anthropology” promoted evolution and its associated concept of 335adaptation as the theoretical backbone of the field, and he stated that physical anthropology research must focus on process and explanation. This article was extremely critical of osteology as being totally descriptive, and it probably had a negative effect on the amount of research being done with human skeletons by both professionals and graduate students. The article eventually had a significant impact on osteology and dental anthropology, but not until almost a decade later. During these same years archaeology was undergoing a spurt of fieldwork, with increased excavation of human skeletons necessitated by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reservoir construction.

The authors of many osteological reports and appendices reported on dental caries, but made no inferences concerning the diets of the ancient people that they were studying. For example, neither Alice Brues (1957, 1958b, 1959a, 1962, 1963b), who would soon become a well-known physical anthropologist, nor Aaron Elkins (1959), developer of a clever physical anthropologist murder mystery character, made any inferences from caries data they reported from Oklahoma. Other researchers reported the frequencies of dental decay and from their data drew conclusions about diets, especially the presence or absence of agriculture in the ancient cultures (Cran, 1959; Goldstein, 1948, 1957; Newman, 1951; Snow, 1945a; Stewart, 1943a; Webb, 1959). These references are not exhaustive as they concern skeletal collections deriving primarily from the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas, but they do show trends in using caries as an indicator of dietary change, particularly the advent of agriculture. Similar trends undoubtedly can be found concerning the study of ancient skeletons from throughout ancient North America.

The use of dental wear for dietary reconstruction went into decline after its great start with Leigh’s work because of the overriding need for simple age determination systems. The publication of Hrdlička’s Practical Anthropometry (1939) provided both archeologists and osteologists with a simple and easily used age determination method, which included a stage of wear and a corresponding age category. Both studies of ancient skeletons and living peoples made it patently clear that rates of wear varied between different diets. For example, Hrdlička (1939a:45) provided a clear warning, frequently unheeded by those who used his system, that his scheme was only applicable to “American aborigines” and that it must be recalibrated before it could be used for other groups of people. In an attempt to control for dietary variation between ancient peoples, subsequent researchers sought a way to calculate rates of wear that could then be used to determine age. Zuhrt (1955) used age intervals between the eruption of the first, second, and third molars (roughly 6 years between each) and the differences in wear scores between these teeth to calculate a wear rate and determine age-at-death for his historic German skeletal series. Miles (1958) devised a similar system, and its 1963 publication in Brothwell’s widely read Dental Anthropology made it well known. At the end of the period being considered 336here we had the first methodological improvement in wear scoring methodology when Murphy (1959a) proposed an eight-point scheme for scoring dentin exposure in the molars and a wear gradient system (Murphy, 1959b) that could be used for age determination.

In contrast to the scant progress seen in caries and wear research, considerable progress was made in the study of dental defects (i.e., methodology stage). Various clinical studies had been exploring the relationship of physiological growth disturbances, dental defects, and caries following the lines of research begun during Mummery’s time (e.g., Mellanby, 1929; Day, 1944). Between 1932 and 1944, University of Illinois dental researchers produced a number of studies relating the time of tooth development to histological structures (Massler et al., 1941; Sarnat and Schour, 1941; Schour and Massler, 1941; Schour and Van Dyke, 1932), while others examined the relationship of various diseases and physiological disturbances and the development of dental defects (e.g., Kreshover, 1940, 1960; Kreshover and Clough, 1953). The reader is referred to Goodman and Rose (1990) for a more complete discussion of the history of clinical and epidemiological dental defect studies. The ultimate conclusion that would be drawn from this research was that various physiological upsets produced dental defects seen both on the surface (enamel hypoplasia) and in histological sections (Wilson bands) and that these defects are products of childhood stress and poor nutrition.

Although Tomes (1892) had shown that ancient teeth could be sectioned and studied microscopically, it was not until a half century later that any significant work was done. Despite the work going on in Illinois, this increased interest in ancient dental structure was still being driven by searching for the cause of high frequencies of modern dental decay. Sognnaes (1955) sectioned 233 archeological teeth and carefully documented the postmortem changes. He went on to demonstrate that prehistoric teeth are rarely superior in structure when compared to modern teeth and yet they always exhibit less dental disease (Sognnaes, 1956). Following the trends seen in all aspects of dental anthropology studies, hypotheses were also tested among living, but nonwestern/nonindustrial, peoples. Moorrees (1957) attributed the decline in Aleut enamel and dentin microstructure to a decline in the quality of the diet. Cran (1960) used dental histology to demonstrate that the low dental decay among native Australians was due to the absence of refined carbohydrates rather than poor microstructure. Falin (1961) demonstrated the same relationship in his comparison of dental enamel microdefects among teeth from the “Stone Age,” Bronze Age, and modern eastern Europeans. These studies put an end to the search for superior dental structure in the past and paved the way for using dental defects to reconstruct stress levels and dietary quality in past peoples (i.e., methodology stage).

After Hrdlička the first major contribution to the study of Native American dental morphology was made by Dahlberg (1945), whose study of morphological 337variation of Native Americans, especially the Pima, spanned decades. This work became more broadly known among biological anthropologists with Dahlberg’s (1951) publication of “The Dentition of the American Indian” in the Laughlin edited volume, Papers on the Physical Anthropology of the American Indian, published by the Viking Fund (the parent of the Wenner-Gren Foundation). The critical contribution was the establishment of standards for recording morphological variation (i.e., methodology stage). Beginning in 1956 and continuing through the 1970s, Dahlberg distributed plaster plaques for use in standardizing the scoring of morphological variation. These plaques are familiar to many biological anthropology students and are still in use today. Shortly thereafter, the study of Aleut teeth by Moorrees (1957) included extensive morphological data and comparison to other groups. However, nothing occurs in the routine study of ancient Native American skeletons except the occasional referencing of some morphological variation. The research role of morphology is still filled by reliance upon variation in cranial shape and dimensions. The potential for use of morphology is there; Scott and Turner (1988) credited Klatsky and Fisher (1953) as the first to use dental morphology to discriminate among human races. While the morphological analysis of the teeth of excavated skeletons is particularly sparse, Scott and Turner (1997) saw the 1950s as a period of basic research where Kraus, Garn, and Lasker, among others, were establishing the genetic foundations of morphological variation.

The period during and after World War II produced relatively little advancement in the use of dental anthropology in the study of ancient skeletons. Increased dental decay was being used as the signature of an agricultural economy, but little use was being made of the decay frequencies being reported in the osteological reports and appendices. The use of dental wear was still confined primarily to the determination of age-at-death, but major methodological improvements were made in controlling for dietary variation and recording degrees of wear. The notion that a decline in the quality of enamel structure was the cause of the modern epidemic of dental disease was finally laid to rest, making it possible for new dental development standards to be used by researchers in the next period to reconstruct childhood stress patterns from dental defects. Pioneering work in dental morphology studies was under way, and the inclusion of some of this work in the influential publication of The Physical Anthropology of the American Indian (Laughlin, 1951) set the stage for its use in the study of excavated skeletal remains.

V. MODERN 1960–TODAY

The decade of the sixties was an exciting time for archaeology and physical anthropology that had a great impact on the growth of dental anthropology as 338a specialty and its application to the study of human skeletons — bioarchaeology. One of the most important was the great growth of anthropology departments that provided jobs for the young innovators in both archaeology and physical anthropology. More importantly, this growth had an impact on the size of the graduate student body, and it is this group that produced many of the methodological innovations in dental anthropology, as well as their immediate application to testing the hypotheses generated by the theoreticians of the “New Archeology.” It is only natural that archeologists interested in understanding the reasons for culture change should focus their attention on one of the great human revolutions — the advent of agriculture. Dental anthropology had been preparing itself, and here was the ideal application for its one solidly developed method—dietary reconstruction.

We can see some changes in caries research among ancient peoples, with Dahlberg (1960) pondering the anomalously low rates of decay observed among the Neolithic agriculturalists at Jarmo and Carbonell (1966) examining the teeth from ancient Kish. As influential as was the work of Leigh earlier in the century, it was Don Brothwell’s (1963a) chapter on “Macroscopic Dental Pathology of Some Earlier Human Populations” in his edited volume Dental Anthropology (Brothwell, 1963b) that included a significant synthesis of the literature on ancient caries and made it clear that dental disease could be used for the reconstruction of ancient diets. Dental Anthropology (Brothwell, 1963b) was the first textbook on the study of ancient teeth, and it is here that so many of the advances in dental research were brought to the attention of archeologists and osteologists alike. In fact, our recently purchased copy of this book was once owned by a well-known Midwestern archeologist. Further extending Brothwell’s influence on archeologists were the graphs and discussion of dental decay and its relationship to diet found in his even more widely read and used Digging Up Bones (Brothwell, 1963c). On a worldwide basis this is the most frequently cited book in the bibliographies of archeological reports that include a discussion of excavated skeletons. Here he provided a detailed system for recording dental disease and wear when studying ancient skeletons, and the two books together led to the extensive use of teeth for reconstructing ancient diets and establishing the presence of agriculture. However, it was still some years before inferences about diet became a standard part of routine osteology. There are many reports and appendices referring to dental disease, but with no inferences concerning the diet (e.g., Bass and Rhule, 1976; Bennett, 1973a; Buikstra et al., 1971; Buikstra and Fowler, 1975; Egnatz, 1983; Ford, 1963; Maples, 1962; McWilliams, 1965, 1968; Phenice, 1969a). However, some researchers reported the frequencies of dental decay and, from their data, made inferences about diets, especially the presence of agriculture (Black, 1979; Hoyme and Bass, 1962; Keith, 1973; Klepinger, 1972; Mehta and Sensenig, 1966; Scott and Birkedal, 1972).

339One reason for the lack of dietary inference in studies of specific skeletal collections was that a question still remained as to what frequency of diseased teeth was necessary to support an assertion that these people were agriculturalists. There was no established threshold; researchers had to compare their data to other skeletal series and then qualify their reconstructions with the words possible or probable. Christy Turner II (1979) faced this problem in trying to establish that the Jomon people of central Japan were agriculturalists. He thus compiled published caries data on 64 skeletal samples representing hunter–gatherers, mixed economy, and agriculturalists and found that hunter–gatherers never exceeded a rate of 1 to 2% diseased teeth. This provided a benchmark for comparison when the researcher was working with only one or two skeletal series.

Between the late 1960s and middle of the 1970s, archeologists promoted the study of cultural process, ecological relationships, and subsistence pattern reconstructions (Willey and Sabloff, 1993). These changes encouraged the integration of archaeology and osteology in a way that had not existed previously. The commingling of “New Archeology” (Willey and Sabloff, 1993) with “New Physical Anthropology” (Washburn, 1951) motivated osteologists to focus on reconstructing ancient lifeways and asking analytical questions about when and why subsistence shifts were occurring; i.e., the beginnings of bioarchaeology and the study of dental disease were in the forefront. This paradigm shift and integration of the two fields through the 1970s saw a major increase in problem-oriented research on ancient skeletons such that when Cohen and Armelagos’ volume Paleopathology and the Origins of Agriculture was published in 1984, 68% of the chapters discussed the trend in decay frequencies in relation to the adoption of an agricultural subsistence economy. At the same time there began the production of numerous skeletal analysis methods volumes, starting with Wing and Brown (1979) and followed by Gilbert and Mielke’s (1985) The Analysis of Prehistoric Diets, that included the use of dental decay to reconstruct the proportion of sugar and carbohydrates in the diets of ancient peoples (see also İşcan and Kennedy, 1989; Katzenberg and Saunders, 2000).

Dental wear, mired in its application to age determination, had a much more tortuous path to achieve its routine application to dietary reconstruction. Miles (1958, 1963) devised a system of age determination that took into account the different diets of ancient peoples, and its reintroduction in Brothwell’s widely read Dental Anthropology made it widely known after 1963. A review of numerous site-specific osteological articles, appendices, and monographs turned up only one that employed the Miles technique (Black, 1979). The reason for this lack of use in standard skeletal analyses is very simple: this technique requires the user to determine the wear rate for all the skeletons in the sample and then, once calibrated, data are used to age the individual skeletons. Lack of use is also true for more recently developed and similarly complex systems such as that by Lovejoy (1985). Most archeologists and osteologists did not use the more 340complex population-based systems because they wanted one that was simple and that could be used for aging one skeleton at a time — the forensic approach. This simple system was provided by Brothwell (1963c) in Digging Up Bones, where he provided a diagram of dentin exposures on molars that were divided into four adult age periods (replacing Hrdlička’s scheme of 1939). Although he admonished the reader that these age groupings by wear stage were only applicable to premedieval British skeletons, we doubt if the many hundreds of users of this book ever adjusted the age-wear scoring for their particular skeletal samples before using it to age skeletons. At least none ever said that they had done so! Harn (1971) reproduced, almost exactly, Brothwell’s schema in his monograph on the Dickson Mounds Illinois skeletons, and although in the text he warned of a culture-specific limitation, he did not change Brothwell’s chart to use it for his western Illinois skeletal series. The problem is simply that the users of Brothwell’s book who have found a nicely visual aging system seldom searched through the text looking for caveats and cautions. Brothwell’s dental wear chart is also reproduced in the most widely used American osteology manual, authored by Bill Bass (1971). Here again Ubelaker, who wrote the section on teeth for the second edition, clearly stated that wear is diet specific and that the system cannot be used on populations whose diets differ from those for whom it was developed. Despite these admonitions, examination of hundreds of skeletal analyses shows that Brothwell’s dental wear aging system is one of the most frequently used means of age determination (e.g., Bennett, 1973a).

The situation began to change in the 1960s, when more reports were concerned with dietary reconstruction, and dental wear slowly assumed an important role. One example of an early osteological chapter from a salvage excavation project will serve to make this point. In the analysis of skeletons salvaged from the John H. Kerr Reservoir Basin in Virginia, published in the River Basin Survey Papers, Hoyme and Bass (1962) used decay and wear rates to explain the differences in diet between the groups—one classified as preagricultural and the other as agricultural. They talked about how “the coarse diet produced rapid wear of teeth” (Hoyme and Bass, 1962:351) and later that “it is safe to assume that the diet … was varied and well cooked, soft and fairly starchy” (Hoyme and Bass, 1962:354) while “the well worn teeth confirm the suggestion of a diet containing far more coarse, fibrous foods, than soft, starchy mushes and puddings” (Hoyme and Bass, 1962:355). This is just one example in the paradigm shift that brought wear back as an important tool for dietary reconstruction.

The paradigm shift resulting from the cross-influence of “New Physical Anthropology” and “New Archeology” upon the young physical anthropology faculty and their graduate students can be seen easily in the study of dental wear as these students developed new techniques to elucidate the mechanics of wear. The most prominent problem being addressed by archeologists was when and why agriculture developed; once the graduate students in physical anthropology 341had a problem to attack using data obtained from excavated skeletons, methodological innovations became bountiful. In one early study, Patricia Smith (1972) examined the archeological hypothesis that the Natufians of the Jordan River valley were protohorticulturalists. She modified the Broca/Hrdlička wear scoring system to demonstrate that the Natufians exhibited the increased wear that should be associated with increased grain consumption. Lunt (1978) used the Murphy system to document refinements in diet between prehistoric and medieval Danish skeletal samples.

Mummery (1870:42) was one of the first to observe that oblique wear (the occlusal surface becomes angled to the cheeks on the lower molars) can be attributed to the chewing of tough hard foods. Similar observations were made by Brace (1962), Leek (1972), Murphy (1959a), and Taylor (1963). Building on these ideas, Molnar (1971) devised a system for measuring the angle of wear and classifying the shape of the worn occlusal tooth surface. He tested his methods on preagricultural and agricultural skeletal samples. Hinton (1981) made improvements to Molnar’s system and tested the improved methods by comparing samples of hunter–gatherers and agriculturalists. B. Holly Smith (1984) contended that flat wear should be associated with tough, fibrous diets and could identify the earliest stages of the agricultural revolution. She developed a technique for measuring occlusal wear angles and demonstrated that a change in angle within any given degree of wear would identify the earliest stages of subsistence change. Further improvements in scoring methods were subsequently offered by Scott (1979a,b) and Walker (1978) to name two, while improvements in statistical analysis of data were offered by Conover and Iman (1980) and Benfer and Edwards (1991) as examples. Applications of wear analysis to routine skeletal studies increased as researchers focused on the agricultural revolution. Again as an example of widespread use we have Cohen and Armelagos’ (1984) Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture, where 37% of the 19 substantive chapters used dental wear data to document the transition to food production.

A significant methodological revolution in the study of wear occurred when Dahlberg and Kinsey (1963) examined the scratches on teeth with a light microscope and suggested that the analysis of microwear could be useful in dietary reconstruction. The switch to using the scanning electron microscope (SEM) began with Walker et al. (1978) when they demonstrated differences in microwear in hyraxes that were either browsers or grazers [see Rose and Ungar (1998) for a detailed history and discussion of microwear studies]. The real push to develop microwear methods derived from controversies concerning the dietary reconstructions of fossil hominids (e.g., Grine, 1977; Ryan, 1980; Walker, 1981). Development of methods occurred rapidly as researchers turned to experimental studies in the laboratory (e.g., Covert and Kay, 1981; Peters, 1982), the development of methods for quantifying the microwear (e.g., Gordon, 1982, 1984; 342Kay, 1987), and the collection of quantified data from living primates (e.g., Teaford, 1985, 1986; Teaford and Walker, 1984). The earliest applications of microwear analysis to the study of excavated skeletal samples were entirely qualitative, but focused on dietary reconstruction and, more specifically, the transition to agriculture (e.g., Harmon and Rose, 1988; Hojo, 1989; Puech et al., 1983; Rose and Marks, 1985). These studies, especially their routine use in skeletal analyses, were hindered by the expense and time needed to extend qualitative observation to quantified analyses. A major breakthrough for widespread application of microwear analysis was the introduction of a semiautomated system for collecting data from SEM micrographs scanned into a computer (Ungar, 1995). Like the analysis of gross dental wear, microwear studies quickly focused on the transition to agriculture for their problem orientation. Examples include Bullington (1991) and Teaford (1991) working on North American problems, Pastor (1993) on the Indian subcontinent, and Molleson and colleagues (1993) on Neolithic sites in Syria.

The seventies witnessed the greatest revolution in research methodology in the area of dental defects. The research of those doing animal experimentation and clinical studies came together neatly with the work of those examining ancient teeth looking for the elusive evidence of superior structure and an explanation for the modern plague of dental decay. Once again Brothwell’s (1963b) edited Dental Anthropology played a pivotal role in promoting the use of the latest methods by the large corps of graduate students working on dissertations and interested in problems posed by archeologists. It is not so much that each of these chapters was truly innovative, but that enough research had been published that the authors could securely establish how dental anthropology could make a significant contribution to the study of the past. Second, the book was widely read by physical anthropologists and archeologists, thus taking these studies from the relative obscurity of dental and medical journals to a broad spectrum of anthropologists and archeologists alike. In his chapter, Clement (1963) reviewed the previous studies integrating the knowledge gained from clinical and animal studies with that of living nonindustrial people and ultimately the study of ancient teeth. His comparison of prehistoric and modern dental microstructure clearly established that ancient peoples also had dental microdefects and that variation in enamel structure was not the leading cause of the modern increase in dental disease. We think that this chapter had a direct—and through the lectures of faculty an indirect — influence on a new generation of dental anthropologists.

Swärdstedt (1966) conducted the first systematic study of enamel hypoplasias in an archeological population, demonstrating that hypoplasias were more common among the lower social classes of a medieval population in Westerhus, Sweden. His work was followed in the 1970s by a steady stream of studies applying the analysis of enamel hypoplasias to reconstruction of childhood stress in ancient skeletal populations. Here the guiding concept is that the frequency 343and age distribution of dental developmental defects could be used to reconstruct the amount and age pattern of childhood stress, and these patterns then could be compared among samples to establish trends in childhood stress associated with such phenomena as the adoption of agriculture and the decline of cultures. These included studies of the decline of the Maya (Saul, 1972; Saul and Hammond, 1974); prehistoric California Indians (Schulz and McHenry, 1975); the shift to agriculture in the prehistoric Ohio Valley (Sciulli, 1978); the temporal trends in the rise of Egyptian civilization (Hillson, 1979); and the adoption of agriculture in the lower Illinois River Valley (Cook, 1979, 1981, 1984; Cook and Buikstra, 1979). All of the studies focused on testing hypotheses derived from the new problem-oriented archeological research concerning the human response to culture change. Unlike caries and wear, hypoplasias had been noted occasionally in skeletal studies and appendices, but virtually no interpretations were made. Knowledge of childhood stress episodes was of little interest until the researchers were engaged in problem-oriented research. This is demonstrated by 10 of the 19 chapters in Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture (Cohen and Armelagos, 1984) using hypoplasias extensively to document the increased stress caused by the transition to agriculture.

It took slightly longer for the analysis of dental microdefects to be used for evaluating the adaptation of ancient cultures. First, it had to be demonstrated more broadly to American researchers that the analysis of dental defects observed in thin sections was possible (Molnar and Ward, 1975). Once the technique was shown to be plausible, it then had to be demonstrated that the frequency of microdefects did correspond with the expected change in childhood stress levels. Further, methods for recording and interpreting the age of occurrence had to be standardized. These studies came very rapidly, fueled by the abundance of young researchers (Clarke, 1978; Condon, 1981; Cook, 1981; Jablonski, 1981; Rose et al., 1978; Rudney, 1981; Wright, 1987, 1990). Methodological innovations are still occurring, but the routine application of microdefects to testing archeologically derived hypotheses is standard and is included in standard works on dental anthropology (e.g., Hillson, 1996; Kelley and Larsen, 1991; Alt et al., 1998) and bioarchaeology (e.g., Larsen, 1997).

Once again Brothwell’s (1963b) Dental Anthropology makes a significant contribution to the study of dental morphology because it is here that Dahlberg (1962) promoted the use of dental morphology to assess population affiliations and to document migrations among ancient peoples. Another pivotal study in the use of dental morphology in skeletal analyses is David Green’s (1965) dissertation and subsequent publications (Green, 1966, 1967) on the dental morphology of an ancient Nubian skeletal series. He used dental morphology to counter the assertions derived from cranial analysis in establishing that a temporal series of skeletal collections are genetically homogeneous and are the product of evolution in situ. This alternative to craniometrics for establishing genetic homogeneity, 344a crucial first-step analysis for osteologists attempting to interpret changes in pathological lesions over time, is unfortunately not adopted for routine skeletal analyses. There are a number of reasons for this indifference, but it is most likely due to the amount of time such data collection requires, the complexity of the statistical analysis, and the lack of standards for collecting comparable morphological data. Dahlberg’s dental models were excellent but included only a small number of the available morphological variants.

During the post-1960 period, Turner single-handedly altered the use of dental morphology in the study of ancient skeletons from the Americas. Beginning in 1983, Turner produced a stream of publications that used dental morphology to reconstruct the peopling of the Americas (Turner, 1983a,b, 1984, 1985, 1986). Further, his series of plaster plaques illustrating the scoring of the morphological variations was made available to researchers at nominal cost and are now widely used (Turner et al., 1991). This series, known as the Arizona State University Dental Anthropology System, provided an easily learned and standardized scoring system. This is not to say that Turner was the only researcher using dental morphology to reconstruct population affiliations. Lukacs (1983, 1987, 1988) used dental morphology to establish genetic affiliations for his ancient skeletal series from the Indian subcontinent. However, the use of dental morphology in American bioarchaeology has been very limited and has produced few studies of note other than those by Turner and his students (e.g., Sciulli, 1978). However, this may change as Turner’s ASU dental morphology system has been incorporated into the widely used [especially for Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)-related skeletal analyses] “Standards” volume edited by Buikstra and Ubelaker (1994).

Just as Brothwell’s book promoted all the other areas of dental research, dental metrics were covered by Goose (1963). He mentioned Carr’s (1960) measurements of Middle Minoan teeth, Lundstrom and Lysell’s (1953) study of medieval Danish skeletons, and Nelson’s (1938) measurements of the Pecos teeth, but concluded that little more than reporting had been accomplished. In contrast, he discussed the application of multivariate techniques of dental measurement analysis to fossil hominids, all of which was very exciting but of little interest to osteologists. However, his chapter did lead to the development of a dental sexing technique developed by Ditch and Rose (1972) and further enhanced by Black (1978), among others, for deciduous teeth. However, the technique has never been widely used as formulae must be developed for each skeletal series. Perzigian (1975) used measurements of the teeth to assess fluctuating dental asymmetry for the interpretation of childhood stress among excavated skeletal samples (i.e., the Arikara), but the technique was heavily criticized on methodological/analytical grounds (e.g., Green, 1984). Although methods for measuring teeth are provided in the skeletal “Standards” edited by Buikstra and Ubelaker, the use of dental metrics in routine North American 345skeletal analyses remains minimal at best. Kelley and Larsen’s (1991) Advances in Dental Anthropology contains only one chapter on dental measurements concerning ethnic variation in tooth size, while Alt et al. (1998) have three chapters mostly devoted to sex determination.

VI. CONCLUSIONS

From the 19th century onward dentists wondered why dental decay was so rampant in industrialized western populations. To answer this question they turned to the past for answers and instituted problem-oriented research using ancient skulls. Thus, caries research progressed using both living groups and ancient teeth. From the earliest research using ancient North American skeletal collections, changes in ancient diets were associated with changes in the frequency of dental decay, and by the second decade of the 20th century increased dental decay had been associated with the switch to agriculture. Unfortunately, osteologists analyzing excavated collections and producing numerous site-specific appendices, chapters, and reports were sporadic, until the 1960s, in their use of decay to reconstruct ancient diets. The use of dental wear for dietary reconstruction was also established during the earliest periods, but the great need for some means of determining age-at-death diverted applications of dental wear from dietary reconstruction. It was not until the 1950s and 1960s that the development of reliable age indicators enabled dental wear studies once again to focus on dietary reconstruction. Once archeologists began to focus their attention on documenting the transition to agriculture, methods for studying caries and wear were available for testing their hypotheses and quickly saw widespread application. During this same time methods for analyzing enamel defects and morphology were developing, but had not reached the stage where they were readily applied to the interpretation of ancient human remains.

The turning point in the application of dental research methods to the analysis of skeletons was the publication of Brothwell’s Dental Anthropology and Digging Up Bones. The publication of these volumes in 1963 made the results of decades of dental research widely known to both osteologists and archeologists. The routine analysis of caries and wear increased rapidly from this date onward, and the stage was set for rapid progress in the use of dental defects, tooth morphology, and metrics in analyzing ancient skeletons. At the same time archeologists were developing their own problem-oriented research strategies with an emphasis on subsistence reconstruction. Dental anthropology was ready with the tools necessary to document the switch to an agricultural economy using excavated human skeletons. Anthropology departments were growing at a rapid rate, and the young “New Archeologists” on the faculties were interacting with the growing population of physical anthropology graduate students interested in 346osteological research. Under the influence of the “New Physical Anthropology” paradigm requiring problem-oriented research, these graduate students (needing acceptable dissertation topics) began testing the hypotheses and subsistence reconstructions developed by the archeologists using the accumulated knowledge of dental anthropology made widely known by Brothwell’s publications. Major methodological advancements were made in dissertation after dissertation during the 1970s and early 1980s. It would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that dental anthropology led the way in the development of the new field of bioarchaeology because it was here that the study of human skeletons could directly address the problems of greatest interest to archeologists—the development of agriculture.

The last 15 years of dental anthropology research have not been covered extensively in this chapter because although research and methods development has continued at a rapid pace, the place of dental studies in bioarchaeology had already been firmly established. The focus on documenting and explaining the advent of agriculture by both archeologists and osteologists motivated a great amount of significant research in dental anthropology. Other events promoted the collection of dental data from skeletons during the routine analysis of collections produced by archeological excavation. The most significant was the passage of NAGPRA, which made it clear to all that excavated skeletons had to be analyzed soon after excavation or not at all. Thus, funding for osteological analysis was available more readily in cultural resource management contracts than ever before. The potential loss of museum collections to repatriation encouraged the analysis of long-neglected skeletons and motivated bioarcheologists to develop a standard suite of data collection standards. The Standards for Data Collection from Human Skeletons edited by Buikstra and Ubelaker (1994) includes methods for scoring dental pathology, wear, dental defects, measurements, and morphological variation. This protocol was adopted by numerous museums for collecting data from their curated skeletons, and so these dental data have been collected from thousands of individuals. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has adopted this protocol for documenting the extensive Federal skeletal collections. Further, scopes of work being issued for the analysis of newly excavated skeletons from CRM mitigation projects, which once commonly listed the collection of age, sex, stature, and pathology data, now cite the “Standards” volume as the specified protocol and require the collection of extensive dental data. As a result, the collection of dental data is now a routine activity in bioarchaeology in all of its various research forms, from problem-oriented research to site-specific analyses.