The aim of this study was to develop a comprehensive evidence-based atlas to estimate age using both tooth development and alveolar eruption for human individuals between 28 weeks in utero and 23 years. This was a cross-sectional, retrospective study of archived material with the sample aged 2 years and older having a uniform age and sex distribution. Developing teeth from 72 prenatal and 104 postnatal skeletal remains of known age-at-death were examined from collections held at the Royal College of Surgeons of England and the Natural History Museum, London, UK (M 91, F 72, unknown sex 13). Data were also collected from dental radiographs of living individuals (M 264, F 264). Median stage for tooth development and eruption for all age categories was used to construct the atlas. Tooth development was determined according to Moorrees et al. (J Dent Res 42 (1963a) 490-502; Am J Phys Anthropol 21 (1963b) 205-213) and eruption was assessed relative to the alveolar bone level. Intraexaminer reproducibility calculated using Kappa on 150 teeth was 0.90 for 15 skeletal remains of age <2 years, and 0.81 from 605 teeth (50 radiographs). Age categories were monthly in the last trimester, 2 weeks perinatally, 3-month intervals during the first year, and at every year thereafter. Results show that tooth formation is least variable in infancy and most variable after the age of 16 years for the development of the third molar.

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Brief communication: The London atlas of human tooth development and eruption.

A revised method for estimating adult age at death using the auricular surface of the ilium has been developed. It is based on the existing auricular surface aging method of Lovejoy et al. ([1985] Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 68:15-28), but the revised technique is easier to apply, and has low levels of inter- and intraobserver error. The new method records age-related stages for different features of the auricular surface, which are then combined to provide a composite score from which an estimate of age at death is obtained. Blind tests of the method were carried out on a known-age skeletal collection from Christ Church, Spitalfields, London. These tests showed that the dispersion of age at death for a given morphological stage was large, particularly after the first decade of adult life. Statistical analysis showed that the age-related changes in auricular surface are not significantly different for males and females. The scores from the revised method have a slightly higher correlation with age than do the Suchey-Brooks pubic symphysis stages. Considering the higher survival rates of the auricular surface compared with the pubic symphysis, this method promises to be useful for biological anthropology and forensic science.

Age Estimation from the Auricular Surface of the Ilium: A Revised Method

When dental caries rates are reported by sex, females are typically found to ex- hibit higher prevalence rates than males. This finding is generally true for diverse cultures with different subsistence systems and for a wide range of chronological periods. Exceptions exist, but are not common. In this paper, we present new data for sex differences in dental caries rates among the Guanches (Tenerife, Canary Islands), summarize results of meta-analyses of dental caries prevalence, and emphasize new research that stresses the critical role of female hor- mones and life-history events in the etiology of dental caries. Among the Guanches, corrected tooth-count caries rates for females (8.8%, 158/1,790) are approximately twice the frequency of caries among males (4.5%, 68/1,498). Higher caries prevalence among females is often explained by one of three factors: 1) earlier eruption of teeth in girls, hence longer exposure of girls' teeth to the cariogenic oral environment, 2) easier access to food supplies by women and frequent snacking during food preparation, and 3) pregnancy. Anthropologists tend to favor explanations involving behavior, including sexual division of labor and women's domestic role in food produc- tion. By contrast, the causal pathways through which pregnancy contributes to poorer oral health and higher caries rates are deemphasized or discounted. This paper presents recent research on physiological changes associated with fluctuating hormone levels during individual life histories, and the impact these changes have on the oral health of women. The biochemical composition of saliva and overall saliva flow rate are modified in several important ways by hormonal fluctuations during events such as puberty, menstruation, and pregnancy, making the oral environment significantly more cariogenic for women than for men. These results suggest that hormonal fluctuations can have a dramatic effect on the oral health of women, and constitute an important causal factor in explaining sex differences in caries rates. Am. J. Hum.

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Explaining sex differences in dental caries prevalence: saliva, hormones, and "life-history" etiologies.

Stable Isotope Analysis: A Tool for Studying Past Diet, Demography, and Life History

Dental caries is an important condition to record in archaeological collections, but the way in which recording is carried out has a large effect on the way in which the results can be interpreted. In living populations, dental caries is a disease that shows a strong relationship with age. Both the nature of carious lesions and their frequency change with successive age groups from childhood to elderly adulthood. There is also a progression in the particular teeth in the dentition which are most commonly affected and, in general, the molars and premolars are involved much more frequently than the canines and incisors. Lower teeth are usually affected more than upper, although the condition usually involves the right and left sides fairly equally. In the high tooth wear rate populations represented by many archaeological and museum collections, there is a complex relationship between the form of lesions and the state of wear, which adds yet another range of factors to the changing pattern of caries with increasing age. In the same populations, chipping, fracture and anomalous abrasion of teeth are also common, and these contribute similarly to the distribution and forms of carious lesion observed. Amongst the living, the pattern of ante-mortem tooth loss is important in understanding caries and, in archaeological material, there is also the complicating factor of post-mortem tooth loss. Finally, there is the question of diagnosis. There are diagnostic problems even in epidemiological studies of living patients and, for archaeological specimens, diagenetic change and the variable preservation of different parts of the dentition add further complications. For all these reasons, it is difficult to define any one general index of dental caries to represent the complete dentition of each individual, which would be universally suitable for studying a full range of collections from archaeological sites or museums. Variation in the nature of collections, their preservation, tooth wear, and ante-mortem and post-mortem tooth loss mean that when such a general index appears to differ between sites, there could be many other reasons for this, in addition to any genuine differences in caries incidence and pattern that might have been present. It is suggested here that the best approach is instead to make comparisons separately for each tooth type, age group, sex, lesion type and potential lesion site on the tooth. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Simon Hillson

Papers

Dental Anthropology: Abbreviations