Discontinuity of life conditions at the transition from the Roman ImperialAge to the early Middle Ages: Example from central Italy evaluated by pathological dento-alveolar lesions

Teeth are highly informative in the study of past human populations. In par ticular, the occurrence of lesions in the masticatory apparatus relates dis eases, diet, and living conditions. The dental pathology of three skeletal samples from the north-central part of Latium (central Italy) is reported. Two of them belong to the Roman Imperial Age (1st-3rd century AD): the firs t (including 942 permanent teeth and 1,085 tooth sockets) represents the ru ral town of Lucus Feroniae and is mainly composed of slaves and/or war vete rans, whereas the second (872 permanent teeth and 1,325 tooth sockets) come s from the Isola Sacra necropolis at Portus Romae and represents the "middl e class" segment of an urban population. The medieval sample (912 teeth and 1,097 tooth sockets), dated to the 7th century AD, belongs to the Lombard necropolis of La Selvicciola. All of the samples were examined for caries, abscesses, antemortem tooth loss, calculus, alveolar resorption, attrition, and enamel hypoplasia; standard methods were used to identify, classify, a nd quantify these conditions. The results reveal different patterns of dent al and alveolar lesions for the three populations, indicating a different c ombination of dietary factors and hygienic conditions in the Roman samples compared to the Lombard series. As evidenced by multivariate correspondece analysis, the Romans show afffinites between each other, whereas the Mediev al sample appears associated with the incidence of caries and the pathologi cal conditions related to them, thus indicating increase of these lesions a nd deterioration of the quality of life in the transition to the early Midd le Ages. These data agree with the respective archeological characterizatio ns of the necropolises and the hypothetical social composition of each popu lation. (C) 1999 Wiley-Liss, Inc.