At the risk of loosing sight of Edward's original enquiry may I suggest a
look at:
Brown, W.A.B. & Chapman, N.G. 1991c. Age assessment of red deer (Cervus
elaphus): from a scoring scheme based on radiographs of developing permanent
molariform teeth. Journal of Zoology, (Lond.) 225, 85-97.
I have applied a slightly ammended scheme based on the above to various
Mesolithic sites and found that the early stages of molar and premolar root
development in red and roe deer (and I'm sure other ungulate species) are
very diagnostic of quite specific ages. This of course relies on comparisons
with substantial and diverse modern reference material.
The absolute ages of loose red and roe deer premolars and molars from
Thatcham and a number of Swedish and Danish Mesolithic sites have recently
been assessed:
Carter, R.J., (in press). Dental Indicators of Seasonal Human Presence at
the Danish Boreal Sites of Holmegaard I, IV,V and Mullerup and the Atlantic
sites of Tybrind Vig and Ringkloster. The Holocene 11 (3), May 2001
(scheduled).
Carter, R.J. (in press). New Evidence for Seasonal Human Presence at the
Early Mesolithic Site of Thatcham, Berkshire, England. Journal of
Archaeological Science.
see Journal of Zoology, (Lond.) 1997. 241, 495-502 and JAS, 1998. 25,
851-856 for treatment of the Star Carr dentition.
Hope this helps.
Richard Carter
One successful attempt to make use of isolated molar teeth is reported
by:
Rolett, B.V. & Chiu, M.-Y. 1994. Age estimation of prehistoric pigs (Sus
scrofa) by molar eruption and attrition. Journal of Archaeological
Science 21, 377-86.
Terry O'Connor
U ALBARELLA REG: wrote:
>
> Dear Edward,
> This is indeed a serious problem on many sites. As far as absolute
> ageing of animals in concerned there is little you can do - isolated
> teeth are bound to give you much more approximate information
> than tooth rows.
> You can however work on a relative basis and build up distributions
> of wear stages of individual teeth to be compared with similar
> distributions from other phases or other sites. This can still be
> quite informative.
> I think that the analysis of isolated teeth should be carried out even
> when many tooth rows are available. It is very useful to look at the
> ageing evidence in a number of different ways. Tooth rows can be
> affected by taphonomic biases that don't affect loose teeth (and
> vice versa) and therefore the use of both approaches can clarify
> aspects of the tahomomic history of an assemblage that have led
> to the creation of a particular age distribution. I have worked on a
> number of bone assemblages in which the evidence from loose
> teeth has saved me from interpreting the kill-off pattern calculated
> from tooth rows incorrectely
> Cheers,
> Umberto
>
> Date sent: Wed, 11 Oct 2000 15:48:29 GMT
> Subject: Re: infant mortality
> From: "Ed Maher" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Send reply to: "Ed Maher" <[log in to unmask]>
>
> > I would like to interject just one small detail. With regards to how
one
> > should date the age at death of an animal, the concensus seems so side
> > with dental attriction over epiphyseal fusion. But I am assuming that
the
> > teeth that are actually scored are still set within the animal's
mandible,
> > so one can get a tighter sequence of dental scores when looking at a row
> > of teeth (for example:M1, M2, M3). But what seems to be the standard
> > practise when there are VERY few teeth still within the mandible? The
site
> > I am working on now has a lot of teeth, and a lot of mandibles, but just
> > very few mandibles with teeth! I would suspect that scoring isolated
teeth
> > would result in a much wider suggested age at death (for example 2-6
years
> > of age) as opposed to a series of teeth still situated in the animal's
> > jaw.
> > How would all of you deal with this situation?
> >
> > Edward F. Maher
> > PhD Candidate
> > University of Illinois at Chicago
> > 2000-2001 George A. Barton Fellow
> > (Albright Institute, Jerusalem, Israel)
>
> Umberto Albarella
> Department of Ancient History and Archaeology
> University of Birmingham
> Edgbaston
> Birmingham B15 2TT
> U.K.
> tel. +44/121/4147386
> fax. +44/121/4145516
> email [log in to unmask]
> http://www.bham.ac.uk/BZL
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