Researchers discover earliest signs of dental modification at Mexican burial site

A UConn professor and her team of fellow researchers have excavated an Archaic human burial site in Michoacán, Mexico, dated between 2570 B.C. and 2332 B.C., that is the oldest burial site discovered in that region of Mexico.

The site includes the earliest known example of dental modification in the Americas.

Anthropologist Tricia Gabany-Guerrero, an assistant professor-in-residence in the Division of Multicultural and International Affairs, says the burial was located under 12 feet of volcanic ash and a large boulder, which helped preserve the skeleton. The remains are of a healthy adult male between 28 and 32 years old, who was approximately 5 feet, 1 inch tall.

The researchers determined the age of the remains based on four radiocarbon dates from bone and teeth.

According to James Chatters, an archaeologist and paleontologist with AMEC Earth and Environmental Inc.

in Seattle, Wash., and a member of the research team, the bottom row of the man’s teeth are worn to normal levels, but his upper front teeth were intentionally modified to accommodate a prosthesis, or denture, most likely for ceremonial purposes.

“Dr. Chatters believes they intentionally filed the man’s teeth down to insert a ceremonial denture that would probably have been of animal origin, such as the palate of a wolf or jaguar,” says Gabany-Guerrero.

“The teeth were filed down so much that their pulp cavities were exposed, leading to an infection.”

Gabany-Guerrero, the team’s principal investigator, says dental modification was thought to be a later phenomenon.

“During the Late Post Classic period, shortly before the Spanish came, we have seen evidence of insertion of turquoise and filed teeth in different forms,” she says.

“But this is the earliest evidence of a dental modification by about 1,000 years.”

The team began working at the site in 2000, discovered the man in 2003, and began analysis of the remains in 2005. Gabany-Guerrero and other members of the team are now at the site, where they will remain for much of the summer.

She says they were led there by the elders of the local community, and would not have found it otherwise.

“It is remarkable that we have found remains in a very remote area, and this leads us to believe that this region was much more important in the settlement of the early Americas,” she says.

The local community named the man “Huitziniki” (pronounced “Wee-zee-neeki”), which translates loosely to “The Bald Man,” because of his bare skull.