Prevalence of dental caries and tooth wear in a Byzantine population (13th C. AD) from northwest Turkey

Abstract

Dental caries and wear are important conditions to record in archaeological collections. Reconstruction of the life of ancient peoples can be accomplished by studying their dental remains.

The aim of the present paper was to determine the frequency, distribution, and characteristics of dental caries, dental wear and related diet in the mediaeval Byzantine population of Iznik in northwest Turkey.

The analysed sample consisted of the dental remains of 56 individuals with the total of 280 teeth.

The majority(261 or 93.2%) of the teeth belonged to the permanent dentition. The frequency of antemortem tooth loss in the sample was 6.5% and the frequency of caries was 6.8%. The most frequent recorded caries were mesial (3.3%), followed by buccal (3%). The frequency of dental wear was rather high (84.2%) exhibiting presence of dentin clusters mostly.

This finding is consistent with the hypothesis of caries attrition competition based on the assumption that a beneficial effect of tooth wear is to avoid development of caries. High wear in the archaeological population can be linked to the fact that the cumulative effects of attrition as a result of the Byzantine diet.