The Sunghir Dental and Alveolar Remains

Sunghir 1, 2, and 3 retain most of their maxillary and mandibular teeth, although those of Sunghir 1 are heavily worn and those of Sunghir 2 and especially Sunghir 3 were developing at the times of their deaths. As a result, the two immature individuals provide extensive data on their dental crown discrete morphology and crown metrics, but there are limited data on the third molars of Sunghir 2 and on the premolars and second molars of Sunghir 3 (and none on her third molars beyond their calcification stage; see chapter 6). In addition, although they retain none of their teeth, Sunghir 5 and especially 6 preserve alveolar bone, and they thereby provide limited dentoalveolar data. The Sunghir dentitions and alveoli thus have the potential to provide paleobiological data on their crown configurations, crown dimensions, some root lengths and configurations, in addition to wear patterns. The condition and salient aspects of each are provided first, followed by comparisons of their dimensions and shapes in a Late Pleistocene context. As noted in chapter 4, Sunghir 1 retains 31 of his original 32 teeth, and the one missing tooth, the left I2, was probably lost shortly before death. All of the teeth are heavily worn, thereby limiting morphological and morphometric observations principally to the M3s. But the other teeth provide considerable information regarding their wear patterns. The right I1 consists of worn dentin with a partial thin enamel ring around the labial margin of the crown. The dentin is occlusally flat to convex, the convexity produced mostly by a rounding of the lingual edge of the crown. There is a small area of secondary dentin exposed in the middle of the occlusal dentin. Note that the protruding nature of the tooth is a postmortem artifact, and it probably was originally at the same level as the left I1. There is no unusual wear in the mandibular incisors to match its procumbent state. The left I1 has similar wear, except that it retains more of the thin enamel ring around the lingual side and hence lacks the lingual rounding evident on the right one.