Estudio de las mutilaciones dentales de un cráneo tamil del museo de antropología forense de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Abstract

The mutilations or intentional modifications of the human teeth, have an anthropological and social value, and its study serves to understand the last and present human behaviour from geographic, cultural, religious and aesthetic point of view. The dental mutilations have been, by their frequency, widely studied in the Mesoamerican and African populations, and to a lesser extent in populations of Southeast Asia, North and South America or between the Australian natives. The techniques of dental decoration in the populations of India are less known by their peculiarity. With the present work, besides to make a historical revision of the main tipologic classifications to the dental mutilations (Saville, Rubín de la Borbolla and Romero), is tried to study the intentional dental decoration of a Tamil skull of the Museum of Forensic Anthropology, Paleopathology and Criminology of the Medicine Faculty of the Complutense University of Madrid. The studied specimen is a skull of 20-25 man years of Madurari (Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India). The specimen presents dental mutilations in the vestibular surface of the superior incisives. The mutilations, of rhomboid form, do not adjust to any of the tipologic varieties of the classifications of Saville (1913), Rubín de la Borbolla (1944) and Romero (1970, 1986) for Mesoamericans populations. The mutilation consists of the alteration of the coronary contour, and the inclusion of decorative elements in the face to vestibular of both teeth. In the present study is made a radiographic analysis of the dental modifications, as well as paleopathologic of the mutilated teeth.