Composing the cultural practices of ancient people, traditional archaeologists rely on indications of artifacts such as tools, bones and ceramics. Experimental archaeologists, however, go a step further – recreating past behaviors to experience how people have ever lived.
That’s exactly what a team of researchers recently to explore how Stone Age communities in northeastern Europe have extracted animal teeth to produce accessories. Led by Aija Macāne, a visiting scholar in the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki, the archaeologists personally tested seven different extraction methods to determine which were most effective and effective. Their findings, published on 20 June in the magazine Archaeological and anthropological sciencesOffer new insights into the life of prehistoric hunter collectors.
“Our experiments show that tooth extract was intentional, a time-sensitive process embedded in everyday life, especially cooking practices,” Macāne said in a university statement. “This challenges the assumption that teeth used for ornaments were simply smashed or readily available.”
According to the researchers, animal teeth were among the most common materials used to manufacture jewelry, accessories and other personal decorations during the Stone Age, especially in the northern hemisphere. Experts know this thanks to websites like Zvejnieki, a cemetery in northern Latvia, where hunters collectors put people to rest about five millennia from 7,500 to 2,600 BC more than 2,000 animal teeth were excavated from the graves at Zvejnieki, making it a main place to study how ancient people interacted with these materials.
Archaeologists widely studied hangings of animal teeth from this site, exploring from which species they came, as they were used, where they were placed in graves, and how they were made. Few studies, however, have considered the process of extracting teeth and the physical traces that this leaves, the researchers notice.
To fill that knowledge gap, Macāne and her colleagues polluted their hands – literally. The team conducted a series of experiments to test seven different prehistoric methods to extract teeth: cut, percussion (or striking), air drying, soaking, direct heat and two cooking techniques. They chose these techniques based on previous archaeological and ethnographic research. “While other methods could be tested, we argue that these seven are the most likely given the technologies available in the present time,” the researchers state in their report.
For one year, they have experienced how it is about being stone -age people who need some tooth. The researchers conducted their experiments at the īdeņa experimental center in East Latvia, which allowed them to stem the necessary raw materials of licensed local hunters. In total, they used seven skulls or mandibles of Eurasian Elk, two from wild boar, and two from Roe Deer.
Of all the methods they tested, the two cooking techniques were most effective. To boil a mandible in a ceramic pot not only felt the meat, but caused soft tissues of the bone, making it easy to extract the teeth manually. Putting whole skulls inside a ground oven-excavated cavity used to pierce heat and in this case steamed food has the same effect.
Both methods allowed high excerpts without damaging the teeth, with the added bonzo to make a meal and make the rest of the bones suitable for manufacturing tools. These findings suggest that a tooth extract may have been integrated into broader cultural practices, merging food preparation, manufacturing personal ornaments and funeral rites.
As for the other techniques, soaking proved successful, but did not offer further benefits. Cut or hitting the teeth to remove them also worked, but this often causes damage. The last two methods – air drying and application of direct heat – have not given successful results.
“While this study focused primarily on the tooth -hanging ensemble of the Zvejnieki Cemetery, our results have broader implications to understand dental extraction and suspension production through prehistory,” the researchers declare. “Examining techniques used for teeth extraction, we have gained valuable insights into human behavior and cultural practices during the Stone Age.”
However, questions remain. The researchers hope that their study will inspire other archaeologists to seek physical traces of the extraction process on animal teeth artifacts. They also emphasize the importance of exploring teeth of other species, including humans and dogs. Such work, they argue, would throw “a critical light on the complexity and meaning of these practices.”
