New Approaches to Study Health and Disease in the Pre-Colonial circum-Caribbean

Summary

The most frequent pathologies found throughout the circum-Caribbean before arrival of the Europeans are dental and periodontal diseases. To date, ancient oral health has been studied using a variety of techniques, and recently ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis of dental calculus (calcified plaque) has shown great promise in revealing not only (oral) health and disease, but also diet and the composition of the oral microbiome over archaeological timescales. In this paper, we present ancient metagenomic data generated from human dental calculus from multiple archaeological sites in the circum-Caribbean. We compare the phylogenetic and taxonomic composition of pre-colonial oral microbiomes to modern dental calculus samples and find that the microbial composition of the pre-colonial Caribbean oral microbiome is similar to that of present-day populations. Our findings also shed light on the oral health and disease of indigenous communities before European contact.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15270