6 - Age estimation by tooth cementum annulation: perspectives of a new validation study

Summary

Introduction

Discussions during the Rostock paleodemography workshops have shown two areas that clearly suffer from severe problems in transforming a skeletal sample into an historical population. First, more effort was needed to establish a reliable mortality pattern for skeletal samples. Second, although the Rostock Manifesto concentrated on the modeling of individual age and sex data, discussions frequently criticized the basic data, especially the insufficiently large age ranges in individual age estimations obtained from established morphological age estimation techniques. The group therefore drew attention to the search for methods that are able to determine age with higher accuracy.

Owing to recent significant improvements, a promising method for age estimation is the evaluation of tooth cementum annulation (TCA). The proposed procedure reduces time-consuming, and therefore costly, preparation steps, so that larger samples can be observed with less expense. If a few simple guidelines are followed, the method may be among the best and most reliable of those used for age estimation of skeletal samples.

To validate this method for frequent use, a standard protocol and use of confidence intervals are required, and these may be established by studying a known-age reference sample. The aim of this chapter is to introduce the concept and the methodological bases of an ongoing validation study, as well as the preliminary results.

Morphological age estimation methods versus tooth cementum annulation

Almost all established methods for age estimation in the skeleton suffer from severe problems (see Kemkes-Grottenthaler, Chapter 4, this volume).