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Carter, F and Irish, JD (2019) A sub-continent of caries: prevalence and severity in early Holocene through recent Africans. Dental Anthropology, 32 (2). ISSN 1096-9411
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Abstract
The most recognizable pathological condition of the human oral cavity is, arguably, dental caries. Beyond a direct impact on oral health, caries presence (or absence) provides important data for bioarchaeologists—to help reconstruct the diet of past populations and individuals. This study explores such data in 44 samples (n=2,119 individuals, 33,444 teeth) dating between 10,000 BP and recent times across the African sub-continent. It is, to date, the most extensive investigation of its kind in this part of the world, entailing descriptions and quantitative comparisons of caries by period, environment, sub-sistence strategy and sex. Mann-Whitney U tests and factorial ANOVA results provide expected and some unexpected findings, including: 1) a diachronic increase in caries prevalence across the sub-continent, likely related to diet change from widespread population movement; 2) savanna peoples exhibit more caries than those from other environmental regions; 3) subsistence strategy plays a major role in caries occurrence; and 4) males and females do not evidence significant differences in caries frequencies, but variation does exist in several regional groups. These findings reveal that global trends described by previous researchers often apply, though not always—so it is prudent to consider regions independently.
| Item Type: | Article |
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| Uncontrolled Keywords: | 1105 Dentistry |
| Subjects: | G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GN Anthropology Q Science > QH Natural history > QH301 Biology Q Science > QM Human anatomy |
| Divisions: | Biological & Environmental Sciences (from Sep 19) |
| Publisher: | Dental Anthropology Association |
| Date Deposited: | 27 Feb 2020 09:34 |
| Last Modified: | 04 Sep 2021 07:50 |
| DOI or ID number: | 10.26575/daj.v32i2.285 |
| URI: | https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/12329 |
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