The circles of life: age at death estimation in burnt teeth through tooth cementum annulations

Abstract

Age at death estimation in burnt human remains is problematic due to the severe heat-induced modifications that may affect the skeleton after a burning event. The objective of this paper was to assess if cementochronology, which focuses on the cementum incremental lines, is a reliable method of age estimation in burnt remains. Besides the classical approach based on the counting of incremental lines, another approach based on the extrapolation of incremental lines taking into account the cement layer thickness and the incremental line thickness was investigated. A comparison of the performance of the two techniques was carried out on a sample of 60 identified monoradicular teeth that were recently extracted at dentist offices and then experimentally burnt at two maximum temperatures (400 and 900 °C

Interglobular dentine attributed to vitamin D deficiency visible in cremated human teeth

“…Since the colour of most of retrieved dentine in archaeological cremation deposits is grey to white (see Fig. 5 ), the first set of teeth was burned at 600 °C for the duration of 2 h since this is the expected minimum temperature of an archaeological pyre, which could result in the observed colours 16 , 45 . The second set of teeth was burned at 800 °C (for 2 h), which is expected to be the average temperature of the pyres, based on the macroscopic assessment of the cremation material (i.e.…”

“…Yet, these palaeopathological conditions remain almost exclusively identified on inhumed individuals. Although the osteological study of cremated human remains has tremendously increased over the years, opening new possibilities, most of these studies have focused on improving sexing 11 – 13 and ageing methods 14 – 16 since biological sex and age are vital data needed for the reconstruction of both an individual’s identity as well as the social organization of past populations. In parallel, cremated human remains are also often included in more recent palaeomobility studies using strontium isotope ratios 17 – 22 .…”

The Effects of Experimental Whole-Body Burning on Histological Age-at-Death Estimation from Human Cortical Bone and Dental Cementum

“…These previously published studies [ 45 , 47 , 49 , 51 , 54 ] however, did not examine an overlapping range of burning temperatures or burning times, meaning that there is currently no consensus as to why their results differ (see Carroll and Squires [ 53 ] for details on the inconsistencies of previous experiments and results). Apart from bone experiments, other researchers have also experimented on dental root microstructure to examine the effects of thermal alteration [ 35 , 55 ], and found higher temperatures impacted the visibility of cementum layers, inhibiting analysis for age estimation. All of these experiments on cortical bone and dental roots, however, used excised bone or extracted teeth which prevented the observation of the effects that surrounding soft tissues might have on the temperature of the bones and teeth and/or histological structures.…”

Multi-proxy analyses reveal regional cremation practices and social status at the Late Bronze Age site of Herstal, Belgium

“…The cremation process destroys valuable features in the skeleton and as such, age and sex estimations of cremated human remains is particularly challenging as the traditional methods for sexing and ageing are based on unburnt skeletons (Brooks and Suchey, 1990;Buckberry and Chamberlain, 2002;Demirjian et al, 1973;Ferembach et al, 1980;Liversidge et al, 1998), and diagnostic elements required for applying those methods are often fragmentary or otherwise unobservable. Fortunately, these scientific methods are constantly being refined, and ageing and sexing methods using metric and non-metric traits based on unburnt skeletal material were tested on burnt human remains resulting in adjustments to existing methods and the development of new ones (e. g. Cavazzuti et al, 2019a;Hlad et al, 2021;Oliveira-Santos et al, 2017;Veselka et al, 2021a). Additionally, the high temperatures reached during cremation heavily alter the structure and chemical composition of bone (Snoeck et al 2014a(Snoeck et al , 2016.…”