Cleaning protocol of archaeological dental calculus: A methodological proposal for vegetable microremains analysis

Abstract

The results show significant differences between the four cleaning stages, representing an important reduction of modern starch grains adhered to the surface of archaeological samples of human dental calculus.

Structural characterization and decontamination of dental calculus for ancient starch research

“…Thus, without direct evidence that a given sample was not contaminated before decalcifying, it is impossible to predict how effective cleaning methods that use the dissolution of carbonate-bound starch contaminants from calculus surfaces are; especially when using weak acid solutions for only a few minutes. We cannot recommend water rinses alone as a decontamination method, such as the one put forward by Tavarone et al (2018). While this method may work in situations where the only proven contamination source are cornstarch granules from powdered gloves (cf.…”

“…We also wanted certainty in decontamination efficiency, through a worst-case scenario that would include varied potential contamination sources, not just gloves, and chemical adsorption to surfaces, versus superficial coating from modified, strengthened starches industrially designed to dust off by rinsing (cf. Tavarone et al 2018).…”

Estudio de dieta en poblaciones arqueológicas del centro de Argentina a través del análisis de microrrestos vegetales e isótopos estables

“…Se seleccionaron aquellos individuos que contaran con información contextual y/o cronológica relativa y absoluta, que permitiera situarlos en un marco temporal y espacial específico (Tabla 1). Durante la extracción del cálculo dental y análisis de microrrestos vegetales se siguieron las pautas metodológicas y bibliográficas presentadas en Tavarone et al (2018Tavarone et al ( y 2019. Particularmente para la identificación de los elementos silíceos, se siguió la clasificación propuesta por International Code for Phytolith Nomenclature (ICPN 2.0, 2019); asimismo, cuando la forma no se establece en la codificación, se cita la bibliografía de referencia para cada morfología, mientras que para la descripción de los granos de almidón se siguieron las pautas clasificatorias del International Code for Starch Nomenclature (ICSN, 2011) y bibliografía con material de referencia.…”

Starch Granules as Markers of Diet and Behavior

“…A dental scaler or scalpel is used to pull the calculus off the tooth, usually onto a prepared sampling surface, such as a piece of autoclaved laboratory aluminum foil, a folded piece of weighing paper, or directly into a microcentrifuge tube. After collection, some researchers further decontaminate the calculus using, for example, multiple washes in distilled water (Tavarone et al 2018), or weak sodium hydroxide (Soto et al 2019). However, such methods are still problematic in that it is unclear if contaminating starches are fully removed in the former case, and whether the method would work on real dental calculus in the latter case.…”