“What Can Teeth Tell Us? Life and Death in Early Colonial Jamestown”

Levy Seminar Series at the School of Dental Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
What can the study of skeletal material teach us about life and death? Janet Monge, PhD, Associate Curator and Keeper of Physical Anthropology and Adjunct Associate Professor in Penn’s Department of Anthropology, and Martin D. Levin, DMD, Adjunct Professor, Department of Endodontics at Penn Dental Medicine, will present an investigation of the teeth and skeletal remains from the colonial site of Jamestown, VA. They will discuss the evidence of trauma and the scientific basis of their findings, using cone-beam computed tomography, intraoral radiography, micro computed tomography, scanning electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy. This research shows how advanced technologies can be used to characterize aspects of life and the disease state of skeletal remains. Hello to all.