Abstract
In recent years biological anthropologists have expressed considerable reluctance in
employing contrasts of differences in the allocation of tooth size across the permanent
dentition for reconstruction of population histories, favouring instead contrasts of differential
frequencies of non-metric morphological features of the tooth crown. This research seeks to
address two important questions: 1) Are systemic biases introduced when prehistoric
archaeologically derived samples are considered in the same analysis of biological distance
as samples of contemporary living individuals?; and 2) Does variation in tooth size
allocation yield results consistent with analyses based upon dental morphology trait
frequencies? The results obtained here from comparisons of 2298 and 2242 prehistoric and
living individuals of 23 and 22 samples from the Hindu Kush highlands, Indus Valley, Iran,
Central Asia and peninsular India, respectively, indicate that no systemic biases are
introduced when prehistoric individuals are considered alongside living individuals. Further,
results obtained from assessment of tooth size allocation yield consistent, but different
patterns of biological distances from those identified by dental morphology analysis. Since
there is no reason to assume that one system of biological variation is more important or
more sensitive than the other, both should be employed when attempting to reconstruct the
biological histories of past and present populations.
BRIAN E. HEMPHILL. (2012) Tooth Size, Crown Complexity and the Utility of Combining Archaeologically-derived Samples with Living Samples for Reconstruction of Population History, Pakistan Heritage, Volume 4, Issue 1.
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