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1882
Volume 8, Issue 2
  • ISSN: 2033-5385
  • E-ISSN: 2033-5393

Abstract

Abstract

Non-adult dental disease has the potential to inform us about childhood in the past, including factors such as oral health, oral hygiene, diet, nutrition, subsistence practices, social status, and temporal changes. Adult dental disease has been well studied in medieval skeletal remains. However, dental disease in non-adults has been largely overlooked. This has led to a significant misdiagnosis of non-adult dental diseases, as well as an overall paucity of comparable datasets. This study synthesizes and analyses skeletal data from 2,613 non-adult skeletons (individuals up to sixteen years of age) from fifty sites in England 1000-1700. This study aimed to fill in the gap in the current bioarchaeological data for non-adult dental disease prevalence rates in medieval England. It also aimed to assess evidence for temporal trends in dental disease, specifically, in non-adults which may relate to broader social changes. Strong trends in the datasets were observed, with a particularly striking change occurring around the period of the dissolution of the monasteries and the English Reformation in the sixteenth century. Chronological and spatial variation was present, but overall, dental health was found to decline from the eleventh through to the seventeenth century. It was concluded that specific non-adult dental disease methods are evidently needed in order to record and analyse sufficiently any such data.

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2018-07-01
2025-12-06

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