Contribution to Knowledge of Dental Health in the Early Bronze Age Europe: Case Study from Pata, Southwestern Slovakia
Abstract
The paper presents results of the dental state analysis in non-adult and adult individuals from the Early Bronze Age cemetery in Pata (Diely site), southwestern Slovakia. The aim of the study was to evaluate the prevalence of dental caries and periapical inflammatory processes and compare it with the populations living in the territory of Slovakia during the Bronze and Early Middle Ages.
Non-adults consisted of individuals both with deciduous and mixed dentition. The children with deciduous dentition had all teeth intact.
In group of non-adults with mixed dentition, four individuals had deciduous teeth affected by dental caries (F-CE = 12.5%, I-CE = 5.7%). In adults, the analysis was carried out in 134 individuals (54 males, 69 females and 11 individuals of undetermined sex).
The caries frequency (F-CE) reached 53.7%. The caries intensity (I-CE), consisting of the frequency of carious teeth (% C = 5.2%) and ante-mortem tooth loss (% E = 8.1%), reached 13.3%.
Both the F-CE and I-CE have positively growing tendency with increasing age. No significant intersexual differences in the caries frequency and the caries intensity were found.
Inflammatory periapical processes were examined only in adults. In 28 (20.9%) affected individuals, 62 (3.1%) alveoli were changed by the inflammation.
The abscess/osteomyelitis was the most frequent (61.3%), followed by periapical granulomas (24.2%) and radicular cysts (14.5%). The prevalence of caries among Early Bronze Age population groups from Pata, Rumanová, and Melčice was similar, while in Branč and early medieval cemeteries their prevalence was significantly higher.
We assume that the observed differences are related to a different lifestyle, especially dietary habits.