“Getting Long in the Tooth” at the Bethel Cemetery: A Paleoepidemiological Analysis of Dental Disease

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Bethel Cemetery Relocation Project: Historical, Osteological, and Material Culture Analyses of a Nineteenth-Century Indiana Cemetery" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Building on our prior paleodemographic research as part of the Bethel Cemetery Relocation Project, this study examines the patterns of dental disease and rates of decayed, missing, and filled teeth (DMFT) across the three periods of interment and between biological sexes. Contrary to what might be predicted, given documented improvements in oral health care and intervention during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the percentages of carious teeth, tooth loss, and DMFT increase over time. We attribute these to a shifting demographic regime and overall increase in life expectancy that facilitated more insults among an aging population. For biological females, tooth loss and DMFT significantly increase over time, while the percentage of carious teeth is significantly different between young, reproductive-age females and middle-to-older ones. These findings suggest that survival into older adulthood for biological females may have been predicated on fewer incidences of dental disease. Our findings also highlight that the frequency of skeletal and dental lesions cannot be necessarily equated with improvements or declines in overall health. The changing demographic composition of the Bethel Cemetery drove dental disease patterns for both sexes, who generally lived longer and accumulated more dental insults.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)   •
• The Bethel Cemetery Relocation Project: Historical, Osteological, and Material Culture Analyses of a Nineteenth-Century Indiana Cemetery

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36531.0