10/06/2021
Did you know..
Dental calculus (what we remove during a dental cleaning) can be used to better understand diets and diseases affecting people in the past. Archaeologists have begun to study the fossilised plaque that built up on people’s teeth in the days before dentistry.
Dental calculus traps and preserves DNA from bacteria in the mouth, along with traces of the things people ate and drank long ago.
In this article, archaeologists were able to identify valuable pieces of jewels in this medieval woman's calculus, changing the way historians look at the role women had in the Middle Ages.
Precious dust found in the mouth of a woman buried a thousand years ago opens a previously unknown window into the lives of female scribes.