AN INSTANCE OF DENTAL MODIFICATION ON A HUMAN SKELETON FROM NIGER, WEST AFRICA.pdf

A. HAOUR AND J.A. PEARSON

AN INSTANCE OF DENTAL MODIFICATION ON A HUMAN

SKELETON FROM NIGER, WEST AFRICA

This note reports the discovery of a pre-Islamic burial from the southern margin of the

Sahara with evidence of dental modiﬁcation. Its aim is to draw attention to the widespread

occurrence of this phenomenon, and to suggest possible reasons for it which may be of wider

signiﬁcance.

THE SITE OF KUFAN KANAWA

Kufan Kanawa is a now-abandoned walled settlement in the plains of Sahelian Niger,

West Africa (Fig. 1). Investigation of this site is faced with mutually contradictory datasets:

there are no textual records, oral tradition links its abandonment to the foundation of the Hausa

metropolis of Kano 250 km away, and archaeological work has placed its main occupation in

the middle third of the second millennium AD (Haour 2003; Haour and Galpine in press).

BACKGROUND TO EXCAVATION

During ﬁeldwork in January 2003 a 2 ¥ 3 m test pit was excavated outside the perimeter

of the walled enclosure, in a zone where farmers reported ﬁnding cowrie shells, ceramics, human

bone and beads after erosive rains (Fig. 2). This was one of a number of test pits excavated, and

it was felt important to sample areas both within and without the walled enclosure. The

stratigraphic connection between trenches (and with the wall) is, however, still unclear.

Excavation uncovered a set of human remains, 60 cm below the (heavily eroding) present land

surface (Fig. 3). No grave goods or inhumation pit were detected, but a large (29 ¥ 19 cm) stone

above the head is assumed to represent a marker, and the burial can conﬁdently be described as

intentional.

No charcoal was recovered in association with the burial, and bone collagen content

was insufﬁcient (0.4 per cent) for radiocarbon dating and isotope analysis (Michael Richards,

Department of Archaeological Sciences, University of Bradford, pers. comm.). Analysis of a

sample of sand extracted from the inside of the cranial cavity is under way in order to assess

potential for optically-stimulated luminescence dating.

The position of the deceased – head thrown back, right hand brought under the chin –

suggests a non-Muslim burial. This, together with the fact that the zone of excavation has not

been used as a cemetery within living memory, allows the inference that burial took place over

OXFORD JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 24(4) 427– 433 2005

and 350 Main Street Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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DENTAL MODIFICATION ON A HUMAN SKELETON FROM NIGER

Figure 1

The location of Kufan Kanawa within West Africa.

100 years ago. This, of course, is a lower limit. The timescale of Islamisation in the region

remains unclear, and oral accounts are contradictory. On the one hand the widely-visited tomb

of a Muslim holy man, some 20 km to the north-east, is assigned an age of 600–700 years, while

on the other some informants place the arrival of Islam in the nineteenth century (Trimingham

1962 and Insoll 2003 discuss this).

PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

The remains of a cranium, mandible, humeri, femora, tibiae, ﬁbulae and innominate

fragments from this single individual were examined. In each case, the bone was friable and

fragmented. Despite poor preservation, the skeleton appears to belong to a young, possibly

female, adult individual. Age is suggested speciﬁcally to be ~25 years following Miles (1963)

and Brothwell (1981).

DENTAL HEALTH

Although the dentition is incomplete the material available indicates generally poor

dental health. There are interproximal caries on the mesial and distal faces of the left mandibular

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A. HAOUR AND J.A. PEARSON

Figure 2

Location of burial excavation (CIM1) in relation to Kufan Kanawa walled enclosure.

ﬁrst molar combined with the absence of the crown of the same tooth of the opposite side. The

loss of the crown has contributed to uneven wear of the occlusal surfaces of the molars in general

which varies on the Brothwell scale (1981) from ‘2’ indicating enamel wear only, to ‘3+’

indicating islands of secondary dentine on all cusps. Additional interproximal caries where the

tooth row was complete could not be observed as the sediment was essentially holding the teeth

in position and could not be inspected without considerable destruction.

TOOTH MODIFICATION

An interproximal groove was identiﬁed on the mesial surfaces of both upper central

incisors. This groove is highly polished, has no sharp edges that might be associated with

damage and is related to polishing of the occlusal and labial surfaces of both central incisors.

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DENTAL MODIFICATION ON A HUMAN SKELETON FROM NIGER

Figure 3

Burial in situ. Trowel points north.

The polishing is such that pulp exposure has occurred on both crowns. It is unclear as to whether

a chip on the labial aspect of the right upper incisor has occurred ante-mortem or post-mortem.

This note considers the possible aetiology of this aberrant abrasion pattern.

A large body of literature exists regarding interproximal grooving. This is deﬁned as

the presence of a ‘transverse furrow of variable shape worn into the mesial or distal surface of

a tooth at or near the cement-enamel junction’ (Lukacs and Pastor 1988, 378) and seems a

remarkably cross-cultural phenomenon (examples in Lukacs and Pastor 1988 and Brown and

Molnar 1990). In seeking causes for this instance of ante-mortem modiﬁcation at Kufan Kanawa,

we might ﬁrst of all – given the highly localised nature of the alteration – rule out factors relating

to the nature of food consumed or to its manner of preparation, as well as therapeutic and

palliative causes (see Larsen 1985; Lukacs and Pastor 1988 for discussion). We remain then

with several possible causes and, following Milner and Larsen (1991), would identify the broad

categories of incidental and intentional alteration. We can rule out intentional cultural

modiﬁcation for aesthetic purposes. The damage on the Kufan Kanawa skeleton is so discrete

as to be inconsistent with the ﬁling or chipping to remove the mesial corners of incisors, as was

commonly documented amongst pre-colonial West African populations as a sign of group

afﬁliation (von Jhering 1882; Lignitz 1919–1920; Marshall 1946) and was in fact thought such

a reliable indicator of African culture that its identiﬁcation in New World burials was argued to

be the marker of recent African immigration (Stewart 1939; Handler et al . 1982).

Implemental and incidental cultural modiﬁcation remain credible options. Both

categories relate to passive processes; they result respectively from the use of the teeth as a tool

or ‘third hand’, and from habitual culturally-motivated behaviour such as the smoking of pipes

or the wearing of labrets (Lukacs and Pastor 1988; Milner and Larsen 1991; Hillson 1996;

Mower 1999). Culturally-motivated behaviour of the past inhabitants remains difﬁcult to

ascertain archaeologically, since research at Kufan Kanawa is only at its beginning stages, but

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A. HAOUR AND J.A. PEARSON

Figure 4

we can make three points here. The smoking of tobacco pipes most probably post-dates AD

1600 in this area (Philips 1983; McIntosh, Gallagher and McIntosh 2003); no labrets/smoking

pipes have been recovered during archaeological excavation at Kufan Kanawa; and, ﬁnally, the

dental alteration noted differs markedly from the labret- and pipe-smoking-induced damage

pictured by Milner and Larsen (1991, ﬁg. 8) and Hillson (1996, ﬁg. 11.12). More fruitful in our

discussion of ante-mortem modiﬁcation, we suggest, is the idea of the use of teeth as tools.

Lukacs and Pastor (1988, 387) remark that ‘While the function of postcanine teeth is primarily

masticator, incisor and canine teeth more frequently serve dual purposes of food processing and

manipulation.’

Documented task-related causes of anterior teeth abrasion include the processing of

ﬁbrous and animal products, the retouching of stone tools, and the operation of a bow drill

(Schulz 1977; Larsen 1985; Lukacs and Pastor 1988; Brown and Molnar 1990). Naturally, other

possible causal agents could be imagined, and multifactorial causation is equally likely. A more

direct association of behavioural activities and abrasion patterns awaits controlled microscopic

studies of different wear patterns; microscopic studies of the striae would enable a determination

of likely agents of abrasion. What is visible with the naked eye is that the modiﬁcation appears

uneven, with the right side further removed than the left. That the right incisor seemed

differentially worn compared to the left suggests that, if this modiﬁcation was indeed self-

induced, it was caused by an abrasive object held in the right hand, where the task/objective

was biased towards the right incisor – assuming the individual was right handed – but with the

action/reaction of generating a modiﬁcation of both central incisors. Also, as the worn area is

not acute, this suggests that the implement used, or the task that occurred, involved a wide rather

than narrow object, which rules out the pulling of cords of plant or animal origin.

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