The Tooth About Pastoralism: Oral Health, Physiological Stress and Diet in a 19th Century Mobile Pastoralist Population from Mongolia

Summary

To better understand diet, oral health, and physiological stress loads of historic 19th century mobile pastoralists from Central Asia, the frequency of caries, ante-mortem tooth loss (AMTL), and linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH) were assessed macroscopically from a skeletal sample (n=40) of a pastoralist population from Urga (Ulaanbaatar), Mongolia. Results show a low percentage of individuals affected by caries (11.4%) consistent with a diet low in sugars and carbohydrates but high in animal products. Thus, despite potential access to agricultural products within their interaction sphere, such foods did not appear to have played a significant role in this population’s diet. However, examination showed high prevalence of AMTL (67.5%), which may lead to underestimation of carious lesion prevalence. While LEH frequency among the Urga population appears high (77%), comparison with a contemporaneous sedentary, agriculture-dependent population from Guangdong province in southern China (n=37) shows a significantly higher percentage of individuals with LEH (100%) and evidence of multiple periods of stress (Urga: 27%, Guangdong: 92%). These results suggest that there are generally lower physiological costs associated with a pastoral rather than agricultural lifestyle and that mobility, population density, and diet have a significant effect on stress loads in these settings.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage