Bioarchaeological analysis of cultural transition in the southern Levant using dental nonmetric traits

Abstract

To many Near Eastern archaeologists, the Late Bronze Age-Early Iron Age transition in the southern Levant indicates the emergence of a new ethnicity. The question remains, however, whether changes in the material culture are the result of an invasion of foreigners, or instead arose from shifting cultural and technical practices by indigenous peoples. This study utilized dental morphological traits to assess phenetic relationships between the Late Bronze Age site of Dothan (1500-1100 BC) and the Iron Age II site of Lachish (Tell ed-Duweir, 701 BC). Information on 30 dental crown and root traits was collected for 4,412 teeth, representing 392 individuals from Lachish and a minimum of 121 individuals from Dothan, using the Arizona State University Dental Anthropology System. Seventeen traits from Dothan and Lachish were compared with dentitions from a Byzantine Jerusalem monastery, Iron Age Italy, a Natufian group (early agrarians from the Levant), and a Middle Kingdom Egyptian site using C.A.B. Smith's mean measure of divergence statistic. The findings suggest that there are more similarities between Dothan and Lachish than either of them and other sites. This analysis indicates that the material culture changes were not the result of a foreign invasion. Rather, the Iron Age people of the southern Levant were related to their Bronze Age predecessors.

Genetic relationships based on discrete dental traits: Basketmaker II and Mimbres

“…It is the standard way that dental data have been used in the past (e.g. Johnson & Lovell, 1994;Ullinger et al, 2005), and improves comparability of results. The early study by Snyder et al (1969) treated the ordinal scores as interval data and constructed a mean value of expression for each trait.…”

Do nuclear DNA and dental nonmetric data produce similar reconstructions of regional population history? An example from modern coastal Kenya

“…Many regional studies examine populations within a single country (e.g., Guatelli-Steinberg et al, 2001), region of a country (e.g., Hubbard, 2012), or bordering countries (e.g., Ullinger et al, 2005). As noted by Buikstra et al (1990), this more refined focus is common in the 5" " bioarchaeological literature and is reflected in an array of more recent publications (e.g., see Blom et al, 1998;Irish, 2006;Coppa et al, 2007;Sołtysiak and Bialon., 2013;Willermet et al, 2013;Irish et al, 2014).…”

Non-metric dental analysis of a Bronze Age population from the Armenian Plateau

“…Non-metric dental traits are partly controlled by genetics, and they are relatively free of gender and age bias (Scott and Turner 1997). Analysis of biological relationships using non-metric dental traits is extremely helpful even in combined samples, when standardized procedures are followed (Ullinger et al 2005).…”