McMaster Anthropology Hard Tissue and Light Microscopy Laboratory

Statement of Research Interest

Our core interest is interpreting the histological microstructures of bones and teeth to recover information about the lifeways of past human populations.  The laboratory has both the specialized equipment and the technical expertise to prepare the hard tissue thin sections that are required to undertake such studies, and to image, analyse, and interpret them. Opportunities are provided for undergraduate and graduate learning at both theoretical and empirical levels.

We have particular capabilities in odontochronology, the precise assignment of chronology to dental development events based on interpreting incremental microstructures in teeth.  These growth markers are laid down in various dental tissues with regular periodicities during development, thus offering methods that utilise an endogenously calibrated ageing standard.  Establishing chronology in unknown modern or archaeological skeletons (including those of fossil hominids) using their own developmental time scales rather than those based on a particular population of modern humans, offers enormous potential benefits to osteologists, palaeoanthropologists, archaeologists and others. Additionally, since a complete record exists from initial mineralization of the tooth (which ranges from about 4 months from conception to about 10 years, depending on the tooth) to tooth completion (or death if this came first), odontochronological studies are effectively longitudinal, and offer all of the advantages that this implies.

Current Bioarchaeology Projects

Isola Sacra

We have had a long running successful collaboration with colleagues in Rome, analysing the dentitions of people from the necropolis of Isola Sacra, Italy (ca. 1st-3rd centuries ACE). Our current focus is on determining general health in sub-adults by identifying Wilson Bands (also known as accentuated striae) in enamel. These are microscopic defects caused by a disruption to normal enamel development, arising from some generalised external stressor. We exploit Wilson bands as proxies of morbidity and use microstructural growth markers to attach very precise chronologies to their formation. This permits us to calculate realistic paleoepidemiological risk profiles for this past population of children.

FitzGerald CM, Saunders SR. 2005. Test of histological methods of determining the chronology of accentuated striae in deciduous teeth. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 127:277-290.

FitzGerald CM, Saunders SR, Bondioli L., Macchiarelli R. 2006. Health of infants in an Imperial Roman skeletal sample: perspective from dental microstructure. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 130:179-189.

Apollonia

We are also collaborating with colleagues from Trent University and the University of Manitoba on a project looking at childhood health and morbidity in a population of 6th century BCE Greek colonists from the Black Sea port of Apollonia.  Some of this work will constitute projects for graduate students in our department.

Current Forensic Projects

Cochrane Infant

Odontochronology was used to establish the age at death of 5.0 months from the tooth germs of an infant being re-interred from an early historical (circa 1900) church cemetery in Cochrane, Alberta, Canada. The precision of this estimate pointed to one particular infant from amongst several putative choices, which was subsequently confirmed by comparison of mtDNA with a living female relative.

Katzenberg MA, Oetelaar G, Oetelaar J, FitzGerald CM, Yang DY, Saunders SR. 2005. Identification of historical human skeletal remains: a case study using skeletal and dental age, history and DNA. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 15: 61-72.