Ancient Maya Teeth

Dental Modification, Cosmology, and Social Identity in Mesoamerica

By Vera Tiesler

University of Texas Press

A study of Maya dental modification from archaeological sites spanning three millennia.

Dental modification was common across ancient societies, but perhaps none were more avid practitioners than the Maya. They filed their teeth flat or pointy, polished and drilled them, and crafted decorative inlays of jade and pyrite. Unusually, Maya of all social classes, ages, and professions engaged in dental modification. What did it mean to them?

Ancient Maya Teeth is the most comprehensive study of Maya dental modification ever published, based on thousands of teeth recovered from 130 sites spanning three millennia. Esteemed archaeologist Vera Tiesler sifts the evidence, much of it gathered with her own hands and illustrated here with more than a hundred photographs. Exploring the underlying theory and practice of dental modification, Tiesler raises key questions. How did modifications vary across the individual’s lifespan? What tools were used? How did the Maya deal with pain—and malpractice? How did they keep their dentitions healthy, functioning, and beautiful? What were the relationships among gender, social identity, and particular dental-modification choices? Addressing these and other issues, Ancient Maya Teeth reveals how dental-modification customs shifted over the centuries, indexing other significant developments in Mayan cultural history.

A tremendous scholarly accomplishment. Vera Tiesler has written an expansive and robust narrative that shows how the study of tooth modification can serve as a window into past lives, humanizing some of the most well-known Maya people of the first millennium. Andrew K. Scherer, Brown University, author of Mortuary Landscapes of the Classic Maya: Rituals of Body and Soul

Vera Tiesler is one of the most productive and distinguished scholars in Maya skeletal and dental studies today. This volume is an encyclopedic and innovative investigation of the practice of tooth modification and its multivalent significance among the ancient Maya. It will be an important resource for anyone interested in dental modification in the ancient world. John W. Verano, Tulane University, author of Holes in the Head: The Art and Archaeology of Trepanation in Ancient Peru

Vera Tiesler is a leading bioarchaeologist and a research professor at the Autonomous University of Yucatán, where she heads the Laboratory of Bioarchaeology. She is the author of The Bioarchaeology of Artificial Cranial Modifications: New Approaches to Head Shaping and its Meanings in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and Beyond.

Preface and Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Introduction: Taking Stock of Physical Dental Embodiment
- 1.1. Permanently Inscribed Body Modifications of the Past
- 1.2. Mapping Dental Decorations from Kirchhoff’s “Grandiose” Mesoamerica
- 1.3. This Volume
Part I. Crafting Maya Teeth (Thematic Section)
- Chapter 2. The Teeth of Dead People: Reconstructing Ancient Dental Works
  - 2.1. Basics in Human Dental Morphology and Cultural Intervention
  - 2.2. The ABCs of Traditional Dental Works
  - 2.3. Scoring Dental Shapes in Mesoamerica
  - 2.4. Contoured Dental Arches
  - 2.5. Dental Drilling Procedures
- Chapter 3. Mouths as Portals, Teeth as Jewels: Dentitions as Indigenous Sociocultural Constructs
  - 3.1. The Body in Mesoamerican Thought
  - 3.2. Meanings of Traditional Dental Display, Lost and Found
  - 3.3. Mouths as Portals
  - 3.4. Teeth as Jewels
  - 3.5. Contoured Dental Arches
  - 3.6. Jeweled Teeth
- Chapter 4. The Life Cycles of Embellished Smiles
  - 4.1. Social Age and Dental Work
  - 4.2. Modeling Children and Sculpting Infant Teeth
  - 4.3. Crafting the Teeth of Youngsters
  - 4.4. Cutting into Teeth as Ritual Consumption
  - 4.5. The Life Cycles of Modified Dental Portals
Part II. Tooth Modifications across the Maya Landscapes (Regional Survey)
- Chapter 5. Dental Crafts during the First Millennium AD
  - 5.1. Mesoamerican Tooth Sculpting before the Onset of the Classic
  - 5.2. Maya Dental Crafting in the Course of the First Millennium AD
  - 5.3. Crafting Teeth across the Maya Landscapes
  - 5.4. Teeth beyond the Maya Lowland Corridor and the Role of Merchants
- Chapter 6. Dental Work, Gender, Community Building, and Distinction
  - 6.1. Dental Work among Men and Women
  - 6.2. Living on the Fringes of the Maya World: Multiethnic Dental Embodiment in the Copan Valley
  - 6.3. The Precious Smiles of Royals
  - 6.4. Ch’ok Rituals and the Mouth Portal of Janaab Pakal of Palenque
- Chapter 7. Tooth Decorations after the Maya Collapse
  - 7.1. Teeth in the Maya Lowlands after the Collapse
  - 7.2. Dental Works in the Wake of the European Conquest
  - 7.3. Teeth and Culture in a Multiethnic Cemetery Population from Early Colonial Campeche
  - 7.4. The Colonies and Beyond
- Chapter 8. Conclusions: Ancient Maya Teeth from a Cultural Perspective
Appendix 1: Maintaining a Precious Smile: A Dentist’s Perspective on Maya Inlays and Fillings. Marco Ramírez, Patricia Quintana, Gloria Hernández, Vera Tiesler, and Elma Vega
- A1.1. Putting Drilled Tooth Cavities into Clinical Perspective
- A1.2. Toothache and the Health Burdens of Incrusted Teeth
- A1.3. Therapeutical Properties of Cements and Fillers
- A1.4. Patient Charts of Inlaid Dental Records
Appendix 2: List of Documented Resources in the Data Survey for This Volume
- A2.1. Mexico
- A2.2. Belize
- A2.3. El Salvador
- A2.4. Guatemala
- A2.5. Honduras
- A2.6. Costa Rica
- A2.7. Ecuador
- A2.8. Peru
Notes
References
Index