Exploring Dental Modification Practices at Midnight Terror Cave, Belize.

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Dental modification in Mesoamerica dates to the Early Preclassic Period and persisted into the 16th century. Investigations have suggested a number of possible explanations, generally aesthetic or ritual, for the practice. There is little consensus in the field. A total of 1194 teeth were recovered from Midnight Terror Cave (MTC), Belize, providing a large sample to critically examine previous hypotheses. Of the 339 incisors collected, 103 are modified (30%) using twelve different modification styles from Romero’s (1970) classification system. Several of the previous suggestions, that dental modification is a display of local family or kinship affiliation have, heretofore, been largely untestable. Paleogenetic analysis was conducted on a number of the MTC modified teeth in order to ascertain sex and mitochondrial haplotypes for sampled individuals. With these data it is possible to better address issues of family or lineage affiliation, as well as sex.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Studies in Mesoamerican Subterranean Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23286