A panorama of tooth wear during the medieval period.

Tooth wear is a natural phenomenon and a universal occurrence that has existed from the origin of humankind and depends on the way of life, especially diet. Tooth wear was very serious in ancient populations up to the medieval period. The aim of this paper is to present a global view of tooth wear in medieval times in Europe through different parameters: scoring systems, quantity and direction of wear, gender, differences between maxilla and mandible, relations with diet, caries, tooth malpositions and age.

Topographical presentation of dental wear as arches in a French mediaeval population.

Unlabelled: The diversity of notation systems for recording dental characteristics and the means used to display them makes comparisons and interdisciplinary collaboration difficult.

Objective: The aim of the present study is to propose the use of a method employed by experts worldwide but which may be new to bioarchaeologists. Since 1971 we have used the International Dental Federation (FDI) system, which provides the location of dental characteristics and the morphotype of each tooth at the same time, thus avoiding the need to specify upper or lower, and right or left to state the tooth position in the dental arch.

Frequency of dental caries in four historical populations from the chalcolithic to the middle ages.

The majority of dental carie studies over the course of historical period underline mainly the prevalence evolution, the role of carbohydrates consumption and the impact of access to dietary resources. The purpose of the present investigation was to compare population samples from two archaeological periods the Chacolithic and Middle Age taking into account the geographical and socio economical situation. The study concerned four archaelogical sites in south west France and population samples an inlander for the Chalcolithic Age, an inlander, an costal and urban for the Middle Age.