Wearing labrets in the Upper Paleolithic

Archaeological evidence for permanent body modification (e.g., tattoos, scarification, dental ablation [removal of teeth], ear and facial piercings, cranial modification) in the deep past is rare. In contrast, there is a ton of evidence for temporary body modification from archaeological material culture in the form of pigments, personal adornments, and depictions of clothing on figurines. To make a claim for permanent body modification, we often require evidence from human skeletal remains. This may come in the form of patterns of tooth loss that imply intentional removal of teeth (dental ablation), wear on teeth caused by facial piercings ("labrets"), obvious shaping of the head through binding or other means during growth and development (cranial modification), or the rare preservation of soft tissues that exhibit tattoos.

Earlier this year, I made the case that the hunting and gathering peoples from the Upper Paleolithic of Central Europe wore labrets through cheek piercings. The evidence is restricted to human remains coming from Pavlovian cultural contexts (~25,000 and 29,000 years ago). The culture is named after a famous archaeological site in the Pavlov Hills and is well-represented at other sites like Předmostí and Dolní Věstonice in the Czech Republic. The material culture is rich and features dwellings constructed from mammoth bones, early ceramic technology, intricately carved bone and ivory artifacts, and copious other evidence of everyday life. While working on my Ph.D. thesis, I was fascinated by the strange wear on the surfaces of the canines and cheek teeth of individuals from Pavlovian sites. In addition to normal wear on the chewing surface of teeth, they have flat wear planes on their "buccal" (cheek) surfaces.

The image above shows photographs of cheek teeth from three different Pavlovian individuals. The drawings show hash-marked shapes indicating the areas of enamel that are worn flat.

The enamel wear on cheek surfaces struck me as very similar to the wear caused by labrets and other facial piercings that are found in some bioarchaeological, ethnographic, and clinical cases. Furthermore, there was some interesting evidence for the movement of teeth (crowding, rotations) that could have been caused by  pressure exerted by habitually wearing labrets—basically the opposite of what happens if you wear braces or retainer to straighten your own teeth.

The top images show a photograph an Pavlovian individual with five teeth showing flat buccal wear. The grey images are scanning electron microscopy images of the same teeth with the canine blown-up to show more detail. Below you see the same individual viewed from roof of the mouth. The continuous wear plan across the teeth is highlighted in addition to the strong rotation of the canine and crowded front teeth.

The wear patterns, tooth movement/crowding, and a variety of other lines of evidence all taken together strongly suggested to me that labrets, rather than any other kind of behavior, were a likely cause of cause for the flat buccal surfaces in the Pavlovian individuals I studied. Incredibly, some children as young as 6–10 years old had cheek surface wear. However, most adolescents and all adults with well-preserved teeth exhibited the cheek surface wear on one or both sides of their dentition.

The image above shows where labrets may have been situated in the cheeks of Pavlovian people. Some individuals, usually younger, exhibited wear on only one side. Older individuals generally had wear on both sides. Thus, adding a second labret later in life seemed to be done only in older individuals.

The overall pattern indicates that labret use was a typical part of Pavlovian life. Children/adolescents probably  received a labret on one side of the face early in life and adults generally exhibited evidence for labrets on both sides of the face. I proposed that this is related to social maturation (often called "rites of passage").

One of the most difficult parts of accepting the hypothesis I put forth for labret use is that we don't have any labrets in the burials! However, this could be because they were made of perishable material (like wood or leather), or that they were kept in circulation (not included as grave goods). It's my hope that future analyses of the material culture from Pavlovian archaeological sites find some artifacts that resemble labrets documented in other parts of the world.

Whatever the cause of the strange dental wear is, it is clear that Pavlovian people shared in a behavior that produced it, and this is pretty remarkable in it's own right. For now, I suggest that wearing labrets is one possibility.

Further reading
Willman, J. C. (2025). Probable Use of Labrets Among the Mid Upper Paleolithic Pavlovian Peoples of Central Europe. Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology, 8(1), 6. doi:10.1007/s41982-024-00204-z.
No paywall here: https://rdcu.be/d7iFG

Willman, J. C. (2016). Dental wear at Dolní Vĕstonice II:  Habitual behaviors and social identities written on teeth. In J. Svoboda (Ed.), Dolní Vĕstonice II: Chronostratigraphy, Paleoethnology, Paleoanthropology (pp. 353-371). Brno: Archeologický ústav AV ČR.

An overview of dental modification and evidence for labret use:
Burnett, S. E., Tiesler, V., Tremblay, K., & Willman, J. (2023). Intentional Dental Modification: Identification, Distribution, and Significance. In F. Manni & F. D'Errico (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Body Modification (pp. C14S11–C14F19). Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197572528.013.14.

An excellent scholarly overview of the Pavlovian:
Svoboda, J. (2020). Dolní Vestonice–Pavlov: Explaining Paleolithic Settlements in Central Europe. College Station: Texas A&M University Press.

An excellent, popular account of the archaeology of Homo sapiens, including a long section on the Pavlovians:
Pettitt, P. (2022). Homo Sapiens Rediscovered: The Scientific Revolution Rewriting Our Origins. London: Thames & Hudson.