Deciduous dental morphology of the prehistoric Jomon people of Japan: Comparison of nonmetric characters

Abstract

Morphological variations of the deciduous dentition are as useful as those of the permanent dentition for determining the biological affinities of human populations. This paper provides material on morphological variations of deciduous teeth of the prehistoric Japanese population from the Late and the Latest Jomon Period (ca. 2000-ca. 300 B.C.). The expression of nonmetric traits of the deciduous teeth in the Jomon sample shows a closer affinity with modern Japanese and Native American samples than with American White, Asiatic Indian, and African samples. However, the frequency of shoveling in deciduous upper incisors in the Jomon sample is lower than those in modern Japanese and Native American samples. The Jomon sample also expresses a much higher frequency of cusp 6 in deciduous lower second molars than seen in modern Japanese, Ainu, and Native American samples. The frequency in the Jomon sample is equal to that in the Australian Aboriginal sample, which shows cusp 6 most frequently among the samples compared. A somewhat low incidence of incisor shoveling in the Jomon sample was also reported in the permanent dentition (Turner [1976] Science 193:911-913, [1979] Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 51:619-635, [1987] Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 73:305-321, [1990] Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 82:295-317; T. Hanihara [1992] Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 88:163-182, 88:183-196). However, the frequency of cusp 6 in the Jomon sample shows no significant difference from those of Northeast Asian or Native American samples in the permanent dentition (Turner [1987] Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 73:305-321; T. Hanihara [1992] Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 88:163-182, 88:183-196). Evidently, some nonmetric traits express an inter-group difference only in the deciduous dentition.

Performance analysis of deciduous morphology for detecting biological siblings

“…These include examinations of deciduous crown dimensions in living and ancient samples (e.g., Hanihara, 1970;Lukacs et al, 1983;Garc ıa-Godoy et al, 1985;Sciulli, 1990Sciulli, , 2001Farmer and Townsend, 1993;Kuswandari and Nishino, 2003) and a limited number of cross-population surveys (e.g., Harris, 2001;Harris and Lease, 2005). Within modern humans, anthropologists have considered the utility of deciduous elements for discerning bioregional affiliation and/or ancestry (e.g., Sciulli, 1977Sciulli, , 1980Kitagawa et al, 1995;Kitagawa, 2000;Harris, 2001;Lease, 2003;Lease and Sciulli, 2005). The feasibility of using tooth size to estimate the sex of subadults has also been explored (De Vito and Saunders, 1990;Alvrus, 2000;Adler and Donlon, 2010;Cardoso, 2010;Viciano et al, 2013); this topic is of great importance to bioarchaeologists working in prehistoric contexts where subadult (skeletal) sex is often elusive.…”

Correlations between deciduous and permanent tooth morphology in a European American sample

“…V V C 2007 Many normally occurring occlusal and tooth crown morphological variables have been identified and quantified in human populations in both the deciduous and permanent dentitions (Dahlberg, 1951;Jørgensen, 1956;Hanihara, 1960Hanihara, , 1967Hanihara, , 1969Turner, 1990;Zubov, 1992;Irish, 1997). Anthropologists use expression frequencies of morphological characteristics of both the permanent (Scott, 1980;Kieser and Preston, 1981;Turner, 1990;Hanihara, 1992;Guatelli-Steinberg et al, 2001;Manabe et al, 2003;Irish, 2006) and deciduous teeth (Hanihara, 1960(Hanihara, , 1967(Hanihara, , 1969Grine, 1986;Kitagawa et al, 1995;Sciulli, 1998;Lease and Sciulli, 2005;Lukacs and Walimbe, 2005) to examine relationships between populations. This is possible because expression of these traits is genetically modulated (Garn et al, 1963(Garn et al, , 1966aBader, 1965;Sofaer, 1970;Goose and Lee, 1971;Biggerstaff, 1975;Corruccini et al, 1986;Scott and Turner, 1997).…”

The ancient inhabitants of Jebel Moya redux: measures of population affinity based on dental morphology

“…Correspondence analysis (CA), using the SPSS Procedure Correspondence, was then used to quantify which remaining traits vary most among the samples. This technique has been used in many prior anthropological studies (Greenacre & Degos, 1977;Schneider, 1986;Sciulli, 1990;Gerharz, 1994;Kitagawa et al, 1995;Coppa et al, 1998;Irish, 2005. A variant of principal components analysis (PCA), CA factors nonmetric data comprising columns and rows of a contingency table and displays them in reduced space to illustrate association.…”