This week, I learned a lot about anthropology. Anthropology is the study of human societies, culture and their development. Meanwhile, I was also learning about many subfields of biological anthropology. I am choosing to focus on the field of Dental Anthropology. I decided to do this because I am majoring in Human Biology and on the pre-dental track. Dentistry has always meant something to me. I find teeth to be extremely fascinating.
Dental Anthropologists study teeth. They specifically study the shape, size, number, morphology and development of them. An organization that I found to be very helpful was the Dental Anthropology Association. They explain how they talk about the teeth of non-human and human primates which help answer questions that involve how healthy they are and what their diet is like.
The DAA, Dental Anthropology Association, supports the exchange of knowledge involving the study of teeth. This organization does workshops that are hands-on. The workshop has involved estimating the ages through dental development, discussion and approaches. In 2016, there was a workshop on dental wear. It is known that many behavior and environmental factors do have an affect on tooth wear across humans. Tooth wear is described as the loss of dental hard tissue. This occurs due to mechanisms called erosion, abrasion, and attrition. Differences in a diet, environment and behavior can affect the teeth. Patterns of past teeth also help reconstruct the adaptations from the past.
What is fascinating about teeth is that it can help tell you how old the person was just by the number of teeth. You can also tell the ethnicity of the person by shovelling or scooping of the upper incisor (most common in Asiatic Mongoloids and Amerindians), taurodontism, chisel shaped incisors, Carabelli’s cusp, hypocone, and protostylid, peg shaping of the teeth. Bite marks on victims can also help determine who had bitten the victim. Each tooth is unique. Enamel hypoplasis, a defect in the tooth where the enamel is thin, can show that the remains had a history of poor diet or nutrition. Micro wear on teeth are tiny marks that are still not shown through a microscope. These small scratches can show ways in which teeth chewed on meat, plants, and other foods.
To help detect the age of remains, calculus, harden dental plaque, can be tested to measure its growth over time which helps determine the age of remains. In conclusion, dental anthropology is a huge factor in determining a lot of things. This includes: the age of the teeth, culture, what foods were eaten, etc. This organization has helped with all of those. They created workshops which help people identify those characteristics and talk about what can be further done to help the situation during that particular moment. I am proud to say that this organization has helped me a lot and I might be a part of it one day. Dental Anthropology is a wonderful sub field of biological anthropology and really contributes tremendously to the themes of anthropology in remarkable ways.
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Resources: https://www.adc-fl.com/dental-anthropology-and-bioarchaeology/
Dental Anthropology sounds like an important probably overlooked subfield of anthropology. Our teeth are a part of us that is directly being affected by our everyday activities and I am sure the study of them can tell a lot about the life of a person, their hygiene and the quality of food and drink overtime. To have a whole organization of researchers out their dedicating their time to this study is quite fascinating. The fact that you can tell a person’s age ethnicity is incredible. I have watched crime shows where they identify most of the information about a person only by looking at their teeth so I can believe it. The contribution this type of anthropology provides to the development and exploration of human life in the past and present and huge. Also I hope that one day you do join this organization.
When first learning about the subfields of psychical anthropology I was skeptical that dental anthropology would yield enough info about the body to real have a whole society dedicated to it. However, after reading your post it is clear how much teeth can tell you about a person. I think it is really cool that you yourself would want to join an organization like the DAA. The DAA seems like a great resource for those that want to find a community of others doing research in the dental anthropology field. Not only connecting people but also teaching them about the in and outs of teeth and what they can tell us.
This post just exemplifies how broad of a field anthropology really is. When considering “the study of humans” I almost always neglect the more, for lack of a better word, niche fields. Dental anthropology seems like a pretty interesting thing to look into, especially if the one studying it has a prior interest in something like dental work, etc. I think the amount of information you can gather from simply looking at the teeth is quite fascinating, and my own personal interest in forensics makes this subfield all the more interesting. After reading your post I actually felt inclined to take a look into the field and see what kind of connections I could find with some of the related forensic/detail studies. While my own personal knowledge is limited on the topic of dentistry, I still found this post to be quite insightful. I might look into it even further.