Project summary
In this project I assess the effect of the urbanisation process on health status from Neolithic to the Bronze Age populations in Cyprus by analysing accentuated line frequency in histological tooth sections.
Project details
Location: Cyprus
Year(s): 2019
Project director(s): Simone Lemmers
Lead institutions and funding:
- CBRL
Project description
My project centres around the question of what effect the urbanisation process during the Bronze Age had on the health of individuals and populations. My focus is on children and how difficult their period of infancy was. In this project I assess the effect of the urbanisation process on health status from Neolithic to the Bronze Age populations in Cyprus by analysing accentuated line frequency in histological tooth sections. Assessment of teeth, looking at the accentuated line number (occurrence), timing, and patterning in multiple individuals from three markedly different Cypriot time periods contributes towards the study of change in health status over a long period of time, involving major socio-cultural, economic and demographic changes. By using light microscopy, I extracted these stress lines from teeth and reconstructed a story of an individual’s first years of life. Specifically, the first molar is key to this research since this tooth contains a stress line formed when the person was born – we call this the ‘neonatal line’. Once I’ve found this line, I then calculate the timing of other stress lines on the teeth. During my fellowship I was introduced to the application of synchroton radiation to analyse archaeological remains that allows the researcher to see inside materials such as teeth with much greater power than a conventional microscope. As part of my fellowship I had the opportunity to examine teeth specimens at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), one of the world’s most important facilities for this type of research.
Project bibliography
Lemmers, Simone. 2020. Health and related stress assessment in prehistoric Cypriot societies. Bulletin of the Council for British Research in the Levant 2018-2019, p 22.
Published:29 November 2021
