Article2005

Dental caries among the prehispanic population from Gran Canaria

Teresa Delgado‐Darias · Javier Velasco Vázquez · Matilde Mercedes Arnay de la Rosa · Ernesto Martín Rodríguez · Emilio González‐Reimers

55 citations0/0 files storedAmerican Journal of Physical Anthropology

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies Archaeology and ancient environmental studies Paleopathology and ancient diseases

Abstract

The island of Gran Canaria was inhabited in pre-Hispanic times by people of North African origin who arrived on the island towards the second half of the first millennium BC. In previous studies, we reported that there are some differences between the coastal inhabitants from Gran Canaria, mainly buried in tumuli, and those from the central mountains, mainly buried in caves. For example, the prevalence of auricular exostoses is higher among the population interred in coastal tumuli when compared with the inland population. This finding may be explained by the practice of marine activities, as supported by chroniclers' reports, by archaeological data, and by bone trace-element analysis, which point to a more intense consumption of marine products by the inhabitants of the coastal regions. Dental caries epidemiology is one of the most important ways in which the diet of past populations can be reconstructed. The purpose of this study is to assess the prevalence and intensity of caries among the pre-Hispanic population of Gran Canaria, in order to increase our knowledge about the dietary habits of these people, and to search for differences among the population buried in caves and that buried in tumuli. We studied a total of 791 individuals. Sex was estimated in 561 cases, and age at death, following Brothwell's criteria, in 549. We found that 66.95% of individuals buried in caves and 58.91% of those buried in tumuli showed at least one carious lesion. The proportion of carious teeth was significantly higher among the population buried in caves (median = 15.71%, interquartile range (IR) = 0-33.33%) than among the population buried in tumuli (median = 6.25%, IR = 0-20%, P = 0.001). Type of burial is the main factor associated with the proportion of carious teeth.These data suggest that the population buried in caves had a different dietary pattern from that of those buried in tumuli.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 55 citations exist upstream.

References

1991Advances in dental anthropology 2001Recording dental caries in archaeological human remains 1979Dental anthropological indications of agriculture among the Jomon people of central Japan. X. Peopling of the Pacific 1992Dental paleopathology and agricultural intensification in South Asia: New evidence from Bronze Age Harappa 1979Health and differential survival in prehistoric populations: Prenatal dental defects 1985Analysis of Dental Wear and Caries for Dietary Reconstruction 1999Dates, caries, and early tooth loss during the Iron Age of Oman 1997Dental disease in the Chinese Yin-Shang period with respect to relationships between citizens and slaves

Cited by

2012Caries Through Time: An Anthropological Overview 2012Socio-cultural factors in dental diseases in the Medieval and early Modern Age of northern Spain 2007Craniofacial trauma in the Prehispanic Canary Islands 2005Calculus, periodontal disease and tooth decay among the prehispanic population from Gran Canaria 2009Can Dental Caries Be Interpreted as Evidence of Farming? The Asian Experience

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.