Dental Morphology for Anthropology: An Illustrated Manual

by Heather Edgar

Overview

This work provides a new, comprehensive update to the Arizona State University Dental Anthropology System (ASUDAS). Drawing upon her extensive experience in informatics, curating data, and dental morphological data acquisition, Edgar has developed accessible and user-friendly standardized images and descriptions of dental morphological variants. The manual provides nearly 400 illustrations that indicate ideal expressions of each dental trait. These drawings are coupled with over 650 photographs of real teeth, indicating real-world examples of each expression. Additionally, trait descriptions have been written to be clear, comparative, and easy to apply. Together, the images and descriptions are presented in a standardized form for quick and clear reference. All of these modifications to ASUDAS make it more usable for students and professionals alike. In addition to these features of the manual, the text makes a brief but strong argument for why dental morphology will continue to be a useful tool in biological anthropology through the 21st century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781315300818
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	05/12/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	202
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Heather J.H. Edgar is Curator of Human Osteology for the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, and Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, USA. Her research focuses on the ways in which historical events and cultural trends shape the biology of populations, especially in the U.S. and Mexico.

Table of Contents

List of figures

Forward

Acknowledgements

Photo credits

1. Rationale: Why study dental morphology, and why use this book to do it?

1.2 Problems collecting dental morphological data

1.3 Dental morphological data are useful

Hominin evolutionary relationships

Worldwide patterns of variation

Intra-regional variation

Intra-cemetery relationships

Individual level analyses

2. A note about the use of the words, "race" and "ancestry"
3. How to study dental morphology

3.1 Data collection

Scoring types

Breakpoints

Weighted frequencies

3.2 Data analysis

Biological distance

Individual estimation of group membership

4. How to use this manual
5. Data collection pages
6. Manual pages
7. Root traits
8. Arch and tooth reference pages

8.1 Arches with directions

8.2 Individual tooth directions/cusp names

8.3 Deciduous arches (teeth to avoid)

9. Individual tooth directions/cusp names

10. Deciduous arches

Glossary

References

Index

Trait expression summary pages