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Three-Dimensional Proxies to Dental Wear Characterization in a Known Age-at-Death Skeletal Collection

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Abstract

Dental wear is a function of age-at-death in human skeletal populations. However, discrete scoring proxies of dentine exposure areas have shown to largely depend on dietary life-history and cultural practices. In addition, dental wear greatly limits research on dental morphological variability since unworn teeth are scarce in osteo-archaeological repositories. Age at death is seldom known, and actual trends in dental crown loss are generally assumed to be age-dependent. We applied three-dimensional (3D) dental crown continuous metrics (geometric morphometrics and topographic shape descriptors) to explore the association of first and second permanent maxillary (UM1 and UM2) and mandibular (LM1 and LM2) molar wear with age in the Coimbra International Exchange known age-at-death skull collection. Results are indicative of significant regressions between the morphometric variables and age-at-death, though showing coefficients of determination of 1.4–23.9%. The precision percentages for determining age-at-death from dental crown shape varied from 31.8 to 45.3%, while a significant portion of the overall shape variation of the molar teeth studied could be attributed to anatomical traits independently of dental wear, since modern human populations display a great variability in cusp patterns and molar teeth relative size.

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Funding

This research was funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad grant number CGL2014-52611-C2-1-P.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departament de Biologia Evolutiva, Ecologia i Ciències Ambientals, Secció Zoologia i Antropologia Biològica, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Elisabeth Cuesta-Torralvo, Laura Mónica Martínez, Yasmina Avià & Alejandro Pérez-Pérez

  2. CIAS, Departament of Life Sciences, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Daniela Pacheco & Cláudia Umbelino

  3. Institut d’Arqueologia de la Universitat de Barcelona (IAUB), Facultat de Geografia i Història, Universitat de Barcelona (UB), c/ Montalegre 6-8, 08001, Barcelona, Spain

    Laura Mónica Martínez & Alejandro Pérez-Pérez

  4. Departamento de Biotecnología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Alicante, Alicante, Spain

    Alejandro Romero

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  1. Elisabeth Cuesta-Torralvo
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  2. Daniela Pacheco
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  7. Alejandro Pérez-Pérez
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Contributions

The project was funded to APP. The dental molds and casts were made by ECT and DP. Access to the skeletal collection was provided by CU. Meshes were processed by ECT, DP, and YA. The interobserver measurement error test was made by ECT, DP, and APP. Geometric morphometrics and topographic data were collected by ECT and DP. Statistical analyses were made by APP, ECT, and AR. Paper drafts and reviews were made by APP, AR, LMM, and ECT. We thank Eugénia Cunha for assistance in the Coimbra International Exchange collection at the University of Coimbra.

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Correspondence to Alejandro Pérez-Pérez.

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Cuesta-Torralvo, E., Pacheco, D., Martínez, L.M. et al. Three-Dimensional Proxies to Dental Wear Characterization in a Known Age-at-Death Skeletal Collection. J Archaeol Method Theory 28, 1261–1275 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-020-09496-1

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