[Bonetools] neolithic human teeth as personal ornaments

[Fotis Ifantidis]

Dear Fabian,

first of all, its nice to meet up again, after quite a few years, when  
I first contacted with you, since your material from Herxheim, was the  
first instance of the use of human teeth as pendants that I came  
through.
Although there has not been an official osteological analysis on the  
two teeth, an initial remark regarding the second, milk tooth, pendant  
could be made. Firstly, this is a rare case, since the drilling was  
made through the tooth and not on its root. There may be a possibility  
that this tooth was not developed -i.e. hidden in the jaw bone-, and  
so there it might must have been deliberately extracted, from the jaw  
of dead or living child, as in your case.
It is quite interesting that signs of "violence" in human teeth -  
pendants are known from aurignacian examples. As I know, Herxheim has  
provided enough piece of evidence of violence during the LBK; could  
this be related to your assemblage too?


The article is in Greek, but all this information that the mailing  
list members have provided so far should be written down -jointly- in  
a lingua franca...

Dear Eva,

thank you very much for your valuable information. As noted on the  
bibliography, the only Mesolithic parallel comes from the Vedbæk  
cemetery in Denmark. Chris Fowler is his book on the Archaeology of  
personhood, uses these data in discussing the relation between man and  
animal, since the grave goods from this cemetery consist of a variety  
of  non-human artifacts.
For me, the case of human teeth pendants is not just a matter of the  
use of another less-recorded material; after all, this "raw material"  
was plentiful in all societies, either Mesolithic or Neolithic. The  
problem lays in the area of the interpretations...

Best,
Fotis