Abstract
This study investigates the incidence of periodontitis in a Mycenaean population unearthed at the cemetery of Aghia Triada (West Peloponnese, Greece) during the 1989–1997 field season. The material consists of 172 dry skulls. Demographic parameters of sex and age were difficult to be assigned due to the bad state of preservation of the skeletal material. The ratio was 50 males, 48 females, 65 unidentified and 9 children, and we estimated an average age of 38 years. In this work we used traditional and modern methods to determine the incidence of periodontitis in the archeological human dental bone. We also recorded other dental diseases, such as ante mortem tooth loss, caries and attrition. The results showed that periodontitis has affected 35% of the jaws. A notable percentage of the individuals — 24% — lost three or more teeth during their lifetime and a total 53% of the population had extracted teeth before death. This paper points out that the ancient jaws present a high proportion of ante-mortem tooth loss, attrition and deep caries, whereas the frequency of periodontitis does not seem to differ from that of other prehistoric samples.
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Tsilivakos, M.G., Manolis, S.K., Vikatou, O. et al. Periodontal disease in the Mycenean (1450–1150 BC) population of Aghia Triada, W. Peloponnese, Greece. Int. J. Anthropol. 17, 91–99 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02447400
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02447400