title: Beeswax as dental filling on a neolithic human tooth.
abstract: Evidence of prehistoric dentistry has been limited to a few cases, the most ancient dating back to the Neolithic. Here we report a 6500-year-old human mandible from Slovenia whose left canine crown bears the traces of a filling with beeswax. The use of different analytical techniques, including synchrotron radiation computed micro-tomography (micro-CT), Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating, Infrared (IR) Spectroscopy and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), has shown that the exposed area of dentine resulting from occlusal wear and the upper part of a vertical crack affecting enamel and dentin tissues were filled with beeswax shortly before or after the individual's death. If the filling was done when the person was still alive, the intervention was likely aimed to relieve tooth sensitivity derived from either exposed dentine and/or the pain resulting from chewing on a cracked tooth: this would provide the earliest known direct evidence of therapeutic-palliative dental filling.
authors.affiliation: Multidisciplinary Laboratory, "Abdus Salam" International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy. fbernard@ictp.it
authors.forename: Federico
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Bernardini
authors.forename: Claudio
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Tuniz
authors.forename: Alfredo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Coppa
authors.forename: Lucia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Mancini
authors.forename: Diego
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Dreossi
authors.forename: Diane
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Eichert
authors.forename: Gianluca
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Turco
authors.forename: Matteo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Biasotto
authors.forename: Filippo
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Terrasi
authors.forename: Nicola
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: De Cesare
authors.forename: Quan
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Hua
authors.forename: Vladimir
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Levchenko
mesh_terms: D001106:Archaeology; D003793:Dental Restoration, Permanent / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008334:Mandible; D013058:Mass Spectrometry; D055110:Radiometric Dating; D017524:Slovenia; D013055:Spectrophotometry, Infrared; D014070:Tooth; D014885:Waxes / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D014885:Waxes; C038228:beeswax