Review of Previous Studies on Dental Wear Method

Chae Lin Jeon; Eun Jin Woo; Sunyoung Pak

doi:10.11637/aba.2019.32.1.1

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Jeon, Woo, and Pak: Review of Previous Studies on Dental Wear Method

Review Article

Anat Biol Anthropol 2019;32(1):1-8.

Published online: 20 January 2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.11637/aba.2019.32.1.1

Review of Previous Studies on Dental Wear Method

Chae Lin Jeon¹, Eun Jin Woo², Sunyoung Pak¹

¹Bioanthropology Lab, Department of Anthropology, College of Social Sciences, Seoul National University

²Department of History, College of Liberal Art, Sejong University

Received 1 November 2018 Revised 18 February 2019 Accepted 19 February 2019

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Tooth wear records valuable information ranging from diets to cultural behaviors such as using teeth as a tool. However, methods analyzing tooth wear in archaeological skeletal remains have been designed and developed with subjective standards and processes. In addition, the definition of measuring range is different by each method and some have not specified it exactly. For this reason, there are limits to attempt a comparison between studies using different types of tooth wear methods even though data on tooth wear in ancient populations have been accumulated for many years. To solve this problem, it is needed to establish a method that can objectively diagnose tooth wear. This study aims to examine systematically a variety of tooth wear methods which have been developed from an anthropological point of view and to consider limitations of each method. A total of 20 research papers which describe a new dental wear method or advanced one were included in this review and then classified into two categories based on the properties of the measurement value, which means both qualitative and quantitative methods of dental wear. Qualitative wear methods were examined according to two subdivisions (① entire pattern on the occlusal surface, ② sum of quadrants on the occlusal surface). On the other hand, quantitative wear methods were divided into three classifications (① angle, ② height ③ area) and each category was reviewed. This approach enables to help understand the trend about methods for analyzing tooth wear, and would contribute to establishing an objective tooth wear method by more standardized criteria in the near future.

Keywords: Human teeth, Teeth wear, Dental anthropology, Physical anthropology

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Table 1.

Previous studies on qualitative method on tooth wear.

Subcategory	Reference	Scale	Sample	Subsistence strategy^∗	Tool	Application
(1) Entire pattern on the occlusal surface	Murphy [11]	8	Australian Aborigines	HG	Naked eye	All teeth
	Molnar [4]	8	North American Indians	HG, A	Naked eye	All teeth
	Smith [10]	8	American Indians, Europeans, Australians, Eskimo	HG, A	Naked eye	All teeth
	Miles [7]	8	Anglo-Saxon	A	Naked eye	Molars
	Brothwell [8]	10	Neolithic to Medieval British	A	Naked eye	Molars
	Lovejoy [9]	10	American Indians	H	Naked eye	All teeth
(2) Sum of quadrants on the occlusal surface	Smith [23]	5	Natufian, Israel	A	Naked eye	Molars
	Scott [12]	11	American Indians	HG, H	Naked eye	Molars
	Dreier [14]	26	Arikara, South Dakota	A	Naked eye, Metric ruler	Molars

^∗ HG: hunter-gatherer; A: agriculturalist; H: horticulturalist

Table 2.

Previous studies on quantitative method on tooth wear.

Subcategory	Reference	Measuring range	Sample	Subsistence Strategy^†	Tool	Application
(1) Angle	Butler [26]	Slope of occlusal surface	American Indians	Unknown	Plastic protractor	First molars
(1) Angle	Smith [10]	Slope of occlusal surface	American Indians	HG, A	Metal protractor	All teeth
(2) Height	Metha & Evans [27]	CEJ^†∼ cusp tip	Arkansas Indians	HG	Dental caliper	All teeth
	Mays et al. [30]		Romano-British	A	Digital caliper	Molars
	Mays & Pett [31]		Medieval England	A	Image J	Deciduous molars
	Tomenchuk & Mayhall [28]	Central pit∼ cusp tip	Igloolik, Hall Beach	HG	Sliding capler, Depth gauge	Maxillary molars
	Mayhall & Kageyama [33]	Central pit∼ cusp tip	Australian aborigines	HG	Moiré contourography	Maxillary first molars
(3) Area	Walker[34]	Exposed dentine	Santa Rosa Island, Santa Barbara	HG	Polar planimeter	Maxillary first molars
	Richards & Brown [35]		Australian aborigines	HG	Digitizer	Molars
	Kambe et al. [36]		Modern Japanese	M	Image Analyzer computer	All teeth
	Clement [1]		Medieval England	A	Image analysis program	All teeth

^∗ CEJ: cementoenamel junction

^† HG: hunter-gatherer; A: agriculturalist; M: modern

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