Female Vanity in the Early Modern Period: Evidence from the Science Based Reassessment of a Supposed Merovingian Dental Appliance.

Musée de la Cour d'Or, Metz, France, possesses a female skull bearing a gold wire dental appliance claimed in a 1934 article on the history of dental prosthetics to be 'probably' Merovingian in origin. Inquiries in 2017 revealed current museum curators were unaware of this claim but were skeptical of such dating suggesting scientific analysis might provide clarity. Carbon dating of a tooth from the skull was carried out placing the artifact in the mid seventeenth-late eighteenth centuries while Metz historical records reveal the find site was occupied by a convent of nuns for most of C14 dated period.

Female Vanity in the Early Modern Period: Evidence from the Science Based Reassessment of a Supposed Merovingian Dental Appliance.

Musée de la Cour d'Or, Metz, France, possesses a female skull bearing a gold wire dental appliance claimed in a 1934 article on the history of dental prosthetics to be 'probably' Merovingian in origin. Inquiries in 2017 revealed current museum curators were unaware of this claim but were skeptical of such dating, suggesting scientific analysis might provide clarity. Carbon dating of a tooth from the skull was performed placing the artifact in the mid seventeenth-late eighteenth centuries, while Metz historical records reveal the find site was occupied by a convent of nuns for most of C14 dated period.

Archaeological/Anthropological Dental Artefacts: Lost, Forgotten, and Intriguingly Possible.

Many artefacts important to the history of dentistry have disappeared from collections. The missing artefacts represent dental techniques of many cultures and all historical eras. The artifact collections include those of major first world institutions and private collections.

Replication of Ancient Egyptian Oral Surgical Procedures Using Stone and Bronze Hand Drills.

For over a hundred years researchers have disputed whether ancient Egyptians performed the oral surgical procedure of drilling holes in jaws, presumably in an attempt to relieve pressure and pain due to periapical infections. To date (although it has been indirectly suggested) there have been no published attempts to reproduce the disputed holes identified in the Egyptian mandibles with tools fabricated from stone and bronze, the materials that were available to ancient Egyptian artisans. This paper presents an abbreviated assessment of oral surgery in ancient Egypt regarding these procedures, with an attempt to reproduce these procedures on fresh pig and embalmed cadaver jaws as proxies for vital human bone, using hand drills that were fabricated of bronze and chet.

A Little Recognized Dental Implant: The First Unambiguous Example Recovered Archaeologically and Its Relevance Within the Story of Implantology.

Peabody Museum, Harvard, possesses a Mayan dental artifact identified at the time of its initial examination as a dental implant. In spite of this early claim the Peabody catalogue lacks any such appellation applied to the artifact, nor does it note another significant aspect of its original description, namely that it bore dental deposits. The skeletal relationship of the artifact in its original archaeological context is not to be found in written dig records or among photographs of skeletons taken in situ, nor are the exact circumstances of the physical examination that was the basis of the initial description fully revealed.