The Impact of Diet and Dental Health among the Mixtec Urban Societies from the Formative Period of Oaxaca, Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Oaxacan Cuisine" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

We present the results of a preliminary study that investigates the impact of increased social complexity on the dental health of two Mixteca Alta populations, one from the Middle Formative (850 – 400 BC.) component of the site of Etlatongo and the other from the Late to Terminal Formative (400 BC. – AD. 300) urban center of Cerro Jazmín. Our research sample includes over 70 burials from Etlatongo and Cerro Jazmín, both sites in the Nochixtlán Valley, Oaxaca. We assessed the presence of approximal, buccal, lingual, and root caries, antemortem dental loss (AMTL), and the degree of dental wear, and compared these factors between a site (Etlatongo) that develops early indicators of urbanism during the Yucuita phase (500-300 BC) and another that presents a later and fully urban (Cerro Jazmín) population. The results of this study provide a baseline to discuss how changes on diet and subsistence strategies impact in the transition of increasing social complexity from urban centers.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• The Archaeology of Oaxacan Cuisine

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 26282