The practice of body modification - often related to the expression of individual or group-level social identity - is not uncommon in prehistory. However, body modification can be difficult to identify since so much of it is ephemeral or not likely to preserve in such a way that we can identity it as related to adorning or modifying the body. For instance, many forms of body modification lack archaeologically-visibility because they only affected soft tissues (body painting, hair style, ear and nose piercings, tattoos, scarification, etc.) which are only preserved in very specific cases (e.g., bog bodies, mummies). However, body modification that affects the human bone and/or teeth of once living people is more likely to preserve in the archaeological record. Examples include cranial shaping/modification, dental ablation (the removal of teeth for cultural/aesthetic reasons), intentional tooth filing or chipping, and facial piercings (labrets) that abrade the teeth. As a biological anthropologist specializing in dental wear, I have come across a lot of very interesting cases of intentional dental modification (e.g., ablation, chipping, filing) and some cases of unintentional dental wear - my favorite being that caused by the prolonged wearing of labrets. These cases always peak my interest because they are great opportunities to discuss aspects of human identity and lived experience in prehistoric contexts - something that is often quite difficult to elaborate on in Pleistocene contexts.
I enlisted the help of my colleague Raquel Hernando to analyze the dental wear, and together with Isabelle and Marie, we wrote up a manuscript for the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. An initial difficulty we faced was context. There is no reliable direct date for OH1 and many doubt an earlier date of 16,920 ± 920 BP. We got around this issue with a morphological assessment of biological affinity using the relatively complete OH1 mandible. We showed that OH1 mandible more closely matches the morphology of other Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene fossils from Africa, but is outside of the variation seen in recent humans. Earlier analyses of Late Pleistocene fossils (e.g., Ishango, Lukenya Hill) also show that aspects of cranial and postcranial morphology of OH1 follow a Late Pleistocene rather than recent human morphological pattern as well. So, the various morphological assessments provide good support for a Late Pleistocene age for the OH1 skeleton. While an exact date isn't possible, the morphological similarity to other Pan-African fossils from the Late Pleistocene suggests that OH1 dates to somewhere in the ballpark of 20,000-12,000 year ago. We then described the pattern of wear on the mandibular front teeth and the cheek teeth. We showed that the front teeth exhibit a pattern of wear that resembles the use of an large facial piercing, or labret, in the lower lip. We suggest that the more surprising facets on the cheek teeth correspond to labrets being worn through piercings in the cheeks. We concluded that OH1 likely wore three different facial piercings - one through the lower lip and one in each cheek. So far, this has never been described paleoanthropological or bioarchaeological contexts in Africa. This is exciting because it adds to the known diversity of body modification practices already documented in Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Africa. The dominate pattern in the Terminal Pleistocene (20-12,000 years ago) is the ablation of teeth - especially in northeast and northwest Africa; but by the Early Holocene (10-7,000 years ago) some evidence for labret-use, in addition to ablation, begins to show up in the African archaeological record. By the Middle Holocene (7-3,000 years ago) we begin to see ablation, labret-use, and chipping/filing throughout Africa. This diversity of body modification practices is interesting because it may reflect the movements and interactions of prehistoric peoples through time and space. Above left: An artistic reconstruction (by Lou-Octavia Mørch) of the proposed pattern of labret piercings worn by OH1. Above rigt: the front and side view of the incisors and canines. The darker areas of enamel on the teeth is the exposed dentin that we propose was caused by a lower lip labret. Body modification often marks specific events related to social maturation (e.g., puberty, marriage, adult status, etc.) during an individual's life. This all means that labret wear on teeth of OH1 provides indirect evidence for personal adornment that is probably tied to social practices and individual or group identity. We hope that this research stimulates new research on human body modification and social identities in the Pleistocene as it has the opportunity to reveal a greater depth of understanding about the social lives of past peoples as more case studies are available for intra- and inter-regional comparisons. Further reading and references:This study:
Willman JC, Hernando R, Matu M, Crevecoeur I. 2020. Biocultural diversity in Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene Africa: Olduvai Hominid 1 (Tanzania) biological affinity and intentional body modification. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.24007. Additional references: Crevecoeur I, Brooks A, Ribot I, Cornelissen E, and Semal P. 2016. Late Stone Age human remains from Ishango (Democratic Republic of Congo): New insights on Late Pleistocene modern human diversity in Africa. Journal of Human Evolution 96:35-57, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2016.04.003. Matu M, Crevecoeur I, and Huchet JB. 2017. Taphonomy and Paleoichnology of Olduvai Hominid 1 (OH1), Tanzania. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 27(5):785-800, http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/oa.2593. Parsche F. 1993. Peculiarities on the incisors in the mandible of the skull Olduvai I. HOMO 44(1):30-36. Tryon CA, Crevecoeur I, Faith JT, Ekshtain R, Nivens J, Patterson D, Mbua EN, and Spoor F. 2015. Late Pleistocene age and archaeological context for the hominin calvaria from GvJm-22 (Lukenya Hill, Kenya). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1417909112.
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John C. Willman
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