This study provides an update on a quantitative method for immature age estimation based on postnatal deciduous mandibular tooth length. Two known sex and age skeletal collections from Western Europe were sampled (n = 97). Linear regression models for age estimated were calculated for each individual tooth, each sex, and sex combined sample using classical calibration. Prediction errors, residuals, and percentage of individuals whose real age fell within the 95% prediction interval were calculated. The teeth which develop earlier in life, the incisors and the first molar, showed the greatest precision, while the canine showed the least. This method has greater applicability to archeological skeletons or to children in developing countries than for use in North American or European forensic contexts. The method can be applied to incomplete or poorly preserved remains of unknown sex, particularly when dental radiographs are not an option or when teeth have been removed from the alveolus or crypt.

This study expands on existing juvenile age prediction models from tooth length by increasing sample size and using classical calibration. A sample of 178 individuals from two European known sex and age skeletal samples was used to calculate prediction formulae for each tooth for each sex separately and combined. Prediction errors, residuals, and percentage of individuals whose real age fell within the 95% prediction interval were calculated. An ANCOVA was used to test sex and sample differences. Tooth length for age does not differ between the samples except for the canine and second premolar, and no statistically significant sex differences were detected. The least prediction error was found in the incisors and the first molar, and the highest prediction error was found in the third molar. Age prediction formulae provided here can be easily used in a variety of contexts where tooth length is measured from any isolated tooth.

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ObjectivesThe purpose of this article is to examine the impacts of physical and structural violence on the well‐being of early modern enslaved Africans by comparing the growth of children in an archaeological sample recovered from Lagos, Portugal with that of modern children known to have lived under socially oppressive and racist political regimes.Materials and methodsThe age of 18 individuals was estimated from the length of developing teeth. Long bone lengths for age in the enslaved African sample were compared with two black juvenile known age samples: the Raymond Dart (South Africa) and Hamann‐Todd (United States) collections. Z‐scores were calculated for all samples using black children in the South Africa Long Bone (SALB) database as the reference. The similarity of growth across the samples was tested and skeletal growth profiles (SGPs) were devised for the three samples.ResultsThe children in the Lagos, Raymond Dart, and Hamann‐Todd samples were all small for age compared to the SALB reference. While children in the Dart sample tended to be the smallest for age and in the Hamann‐Todd the largest, with the children in the Lagos sample falling between them, the three samples did not show significant differences in growth status.DiscussionThe growth deficits shown in this study demonstrate the severe impacts of physical and structural violence on the lives of these children. Although uncertainty remains regarding the timing of growth insults relative to arrival, slavery in Portugal as materialized in these individuals was as violent as in other countries.

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