Research on British Teeth Unlocks Potential for New Insights into Ancient Diets

The discovery could provide new insights into the diets and lifestyles of our ancestors, adding to the value of dental remains in our understanding of human evolution.

The team plans to use the results of this study to help refine their protein-detection methods, and to explore particular problem areas of ancient diet research.

Senior author, Dr Camilla Speller, from the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, said: “This approach may be particularly useful in the detection of understudied vegetative crops, especially in regions where macrobotantical remains are not preserved.

“It may offer a more precise way of identifying foodstuffs compared to other methods such as ancient DNA and isotope analysis as it can distinguish between different crops and indicate whether people were consuming dairy products, like milk or cheese.”

Analysing 100 archaeological samples from across Britain, as well as 14 samples from living dental patients and recently deceased individuals, the research team found that potential dietary proteins could be found in about one third of the analysed samples.

Dr Speller added: “In the teeth we look at from individuals who lived around the Victorian era we identified proteins related to plant foods, including oats, peas and vegetables in the cabbage family. Occasionally, we find evidence of milk and oats in the same mouth – I like to think it’s from eating porridge!”

In the modern samples, the researchers found proteins that reflected a global British diet, such as those related to potatoes, soybeans and peanuts, as well as milk proteins.

First author Dr Jessica Hendy from the Department of Archaeology at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, said: “While there is still a lot we don’t know, this is exciting because it shows that archaeological dental calculus harbours dietary information, including food products that ordinarily do not survive in archaeological sites.”

Contacts and sources:
Shelley Hughes
University of York

Citation: Proteomic Evidence of Dietary Sources in Ancient Dental Calculus is published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.