Ancient Celts: myth, invention or reality? Dental affinities among continental and non- continental Celtic groups (original) (raw)
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Ancient Celts: A reconsideration of Celtic Identity through dental nonmetric trait analysis
2021
The Celts are a collection of tribes and/or populations that inhabited much of Central Europe during the Iron Age and are still something of an enigma. The relationship among the spread of their material culture, the application of Celtic ethnicity, movements among the diverse populations possessing Iron Age Hallstatt and La Tene artefacts throughout Central Europe believed to have been spread by Celtic people, and/or spoken languages identified as Celtic have long been questioned by researchers. However, previous research has primarily focused only on chronological and typological descriptions and documentation of diachronic change. Diverse populations throughout Europe have been intrinsically linked based on perceived similarities in burial practice, art styles and material culture. Subsequently, these associations have resulted in the creation of the so-called La Tene=Celtic paradigm. Under this paradigm, the presence of La Tene artefacts designate a population as Celtic, which i...
PLoS ONE 18(10): e0293090, 2023
The Iron Age is characterized by an extended interweaving of movements by Celts in Europe. Several waves of Celts from Western and Central Europe migrated southeast and west from the core area of the La Te´ne culture (between Bourgogne and Bohemia). Through the analysis of non-metric dental traits, this work aims to understand the biological relationship among Celtic groups arrived in Italy and the Carpathian Basin, as well as between local populations and Celtic newcomers. A total of 10 non-metric dental traits were analyzed to evaluate biological affinities among Celts (Sopron-Krautacker and Pilismaro´t-Basaharc) and Scythians-related populations from Hungary (Ta´pio´ szele), Celts from continental Europe (Switzerland and Austria), two Iron Age Etruscan-Celtic sites from northern Italy (Monterenzio Vecchio and Monte Bibele), 13 Iron Age central-southern Italic necropolises, and the northern Italian Bronze Age necropolis of Scalvinetto. Strontium isotopes were measured on individuals from the necropolis of Monte Bibele to infer their local or non local origin. Results highlight the existence of statistically significant differences between Celts and autochthonous Italian groups. Celtic groups from Hungary and Italy (i.e., non-local individuals of Monterenzio Vecchio and Monte Bibele) share a similar biological background, supporting the historical records mentioning a common origin for Celts migrated to the eastern and southern borders of today’s Europe. The presence of a supposed Steppean ancestry both in Celts from Hungary and Celts from northern Italy corroborates the hypothesis of the existence of a westward migration of individuals and genes from the Steppe towards northern Italy during the Bronze and Iron Age, which contributed to the biological variability of pre-Celtic and later Celtic populations, respectively. Conversely, individuals from central-southern Italy show an autochthonous pre-Iron Age background. Lastly, this work supports the existence of Celtic migratory routes in northern Italy, as shown by biological and cultural admixture between Celts and Italics living together.
The study of dental morphological traits in prehistoric populations is a new method of analysis and allows us to determine important characteristics of different human populations. In this paper we study the dental feature traits proposed by the ASU System (developed by Turner et al. in Arizona State University) by means of an alphanumeric and graphic database recording the dental morphological characteristics and the possible dental diseases (caries, dental wear, etc.). These traits are easily observed, and persist many years in dentally harsh life styles, evolving very slowly and without sex dimorphism. The multivariate data set obtained using the ASU System is defined by means of multistate qualitative variables, and the methodology of statistical analysis is the following: The MMD test (Mean Measures of Divergence) was developed by Sjovold (1977) to observe the differences between two or more previously established and defined groups by means of multistate qualitative variable...
The evolution of non-metric dental variation in Europe
2006
The potential for dental morphology to answer questions about human evolution in the Middle to Late Pleistocene has only recently begun to be appreciated. Non-metric dental traits provide useful information for taxonomic diagnosis as well as for assessing biological relationships among living and ancient populations. This study uses dental morphology to assess temporal change in Europe. Homo erectus serves as
The main goal of this study was to find a possible link between Neolithic populations of Eastern European and Western Siberian forest-steppe zones using dental non-metric traits. The second one was to verify the reasons for the similarity, using tooth crown morphology data. The frequencies of thirty traits were observed using ASUDAS in seventeen Neolithic and two Mesolithic burial grounds, belonging to nine archaeological cultures from West Siberian Plain and East European Plain. The frequency of eight key traits was used for comparative statistical analysis. These include the shoveling of upper medial incisors, the distal trigonid crest, and the deflecting wrinkle on the lower first molars, the six-cusped and four-cusped lower first molars, the four-cusped lower second molars, the Carabelli cusp on the upper first molars, and the hypocone on the upper second molars. Trigonometrically transformed trait frequencies were subjected to the principal component analysis and cluster analysis based on Euclidean distances. The Statistica software for Windows, Version 6.0, was used. The closest affinity between the populations of West Siberian and East European plains was in the Upper Paleolithic period. Eastern dental traits were almost absent there except for the six-cusped lower first molars. During the later time period, both Siberian Neolithic cultures demonstrate evidence of the influence of Eastern populations, which was absent in European groups.
2013
Most studies of dental microevolution haveused the standard methodologies employed in dental anthropology: buccolingual/mesiodistal lengths and the frequencies of non-metric dental traits. In this work we use the occlusalpolygon method which is based on a polygon created by linking the four molar cusp apices using digital analysis. Thismethod has been used to identify different evolutionary trends in Neandertal and modern humans; our objective was to assess the existence of changes in the occlusal polygon area, and thus the general morphology of first upper molars, between two Portuguese samples from the Late Neolithic (4130±90 BP) and the early 20th century. This method allows us to evaluate both tooth size and relative cuspposition in the occlusalplane. Contrary to the accentuated tooth size reduction commonly found from the past 10000 years using buccolingual/mesiodistal measurements, no statistically significant change of the total occlusal area of the crown was observed between these samples. Nevertheless, wereport an increase of 7.45% in the size of the occlusal polygon and hence 9.38% inits relative area, from 27.30% of the total crown area to 30.30% over this time span. This result implies that microevolutionary changes among Portuguese populations led to changes in the positions of the cusps relative to one another in the first upper molar, whereas the location of their apices have moved away from the centre of the crown to a more peripheral position. This apparent increasing trend contrasts with the one reported instudies of both Neandertals and modern humans.
Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 2022
Neolithisation was a relatively fast process that affected both the interior and coastal zones of the Iberian Peninsula, but it was also a heterogeneous process that had diverse impacts on genomic and cultural diversity. In the Late Neolithic–Chalcolithic, a change in funerary practices, cultural material and trade networks occurred, and genomic heterogeneity decreased, suggesting human mobility and genetic admixture between different Iberian populations. Dental morphology has emerged as an effective tool for understanding genomic variability and biological affinities among ancient human populations. But, surprisingly, less attention has been paid to the morphological traits of inner dental tissues in Holocene European populations and their utility for the study of population dynamics. We applied 3D geometric morphometric methods on the enamel-dentine junction (EDJ) of the first upper molars to explore the biological affinities of north-eastern Iberian Peninsula populations from the...
Expression of Nonmetric Dental Traits in Western European Neanderthals
Dental Anthropology Journal
Neanderthals of Western Europe lived across distinct ecogeographic zones from Marine Iso-tope Stage 7 to 3. Differences in dental morphology from seven Western European sites are compared in terms of ecogeography and chronology.Neanderthals (n = 12) along a north-south gradient were examined. These included the Meuse River Basin of Belgium (Engis 2 and Scladina 1-4A ), Southwest France (Pech de l'Azé 1 and Roc de Marsal), the Pyrenees (Malarnaud and Montmaurin), and the Mediterranean (Hortus). Montmaurin is the oldest, followed by Scladina 1-4A and Malarnaud, whereas the others are younger.Dental casts were prepared from Neanderthal permanent and deciduous dentition. These were de-scribed and scored, according to the ASUDAS. Comparisons of dental traits with respect to ecogeo-graphic regions and chronological categories were constructed.Unusual dental features observed include the anterior fovea, entoconulid, metaconulid, and Cara-belli’s cusp. Dental traits that distinguish eco...
While it has been suggested that malocclusion is linked with urbanisation, it remains unclear as to whether its high prevalence began 8,000 years earlier concomitant with the transition to agriculture. Here we investigate the extent to which patterns of affinity (i.e., amongpopulation distances), based on mandibular form and dental dimensions, respectively, match across Epipalaeolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic samples from the Near East/Anatolia and Europe. Analyses were conducted using morphological distance matrices reflecting dental and mandibular form for the same 292 individuals across 21 archaeological populations. Thereafter, statistical analyses were undertaken on four sample aggregates defined on the basis of their subsistence strategy, geography, and chronology to test for potential differences in dental and mandibular form across and within groups. Results show a clear separation based on mandibular morphology between European hunter-gatherers, European farmers, and Near Eastern transitional farmers and semi-sedentary hunter-gatherers. In contrast, the dental dimensions show no such pattern and no clear association between the position of samples and their temporal or geographic attributes. Although later farming groups have, on average, smaller teeth and mandibles, shape analyses show that the mandibles of farmers are not simply size-reduced versions of earlier hunter-gatherer mandibles.