Sperber 2016.1


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Dental Anthropology  2016 │ Volume 29 │ Issue 01 

     As the 29th addition to the book series, 
“Blackwell Companions to Anthropology”, this is a 
welcome and much needed inclusion to the bur-
geoning fields of dental anthropology. With an 
illustrated hard cover depicting the late Christy G. 
Turner II at work, two Neolithic male crania and 
dental pathology in a Swazi skull from the re-
nowned Dart Collection at the University of the 
Witwatersrand, the book’s comprehensive encom-
passment of components of dental anthropology in 
nine parts and 31 chapters is a tour de force in 
hominin odontology. 

     With a list of 41 authors that comprise the 
“whose who” of the dental anthropology canon, 
this work is destined to become a cornucopia of 
odontological inquiry.  The contents of this book 
transcends Brothwell’s “Dental Anthropolo-
gy” (1963), Kelly and Larsen’s “Advances in Dental 
Anthropology” (1991), and Hillson’s “Dental An-
thropology” (1996) by the incredible advances in 
instrumentation and imaging techniques, isotopic, 
DNA and genetic analyses and the paleoanthropo-
logical discoveries made in the past quarter centu-
ry. 

     The nine parts of the book deal with Context, 
Dental Evolution, The Human Dentition, Dental 
Growth and Development, Dental Histology, Den-
tal Morphometrics, Dental Health and Disease and 
finally, the future of dental anthropology. 

Each chapter concludes with an extensive list of 
references that range from Retzius (1837) to among 
the most current (Irish JD et al., 2014), constituting 
an absolute treasury of the odontognathic mastica-
tory literature. The continuing expansion of dental 
anthropology into related fields is exemplified by 
the affinity of diets to dentitions (Forshaw, 2014; 
Morin et al., 2016). 

     Readers of this tome should be aware that, as 
much as the contents are current, the rapidly de-
veloping expansion of dental relevance in related 
fields of diets, genetics and paleo-odontology 
(Hlusko, 2015; Zinc and Lieberman 2016) is manda-
tory for contemporary study of this discipline.  A 

whole new archeological source of paleodietary   
investigation of ancient dental calculus allowing 
for paleogenetic analysis of mitochondrial ge-
nomes providing maternal lineage ancestry is be-
ing revealed (Ozga et al., 2016). 

     The book is unreservedly recommended for stu-
dents and scholars of odontology, dental evolution, 
masticatory anatomy, forensics, and related fields.  
 
G.H. SPERBER 
FACULTY OF MEDICINE AND DENTISTRY 
UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA, EDMONTON 
 

REFERENCES CITED 

Brothwell DR (1963). Dental Anthropology.  New               
York: Pergamon Press. 

Forshaw R (2014). Dental indicators of ancient die-
tary patterns: dental analysis in archaeology. 
Brit Dent J. 216:529-535. 

Hillson SW (1996).  Dental Anthropology.  Cam-
bridge: University of Cambridge Press. 

Hlusko LJ. (2015). Elucidating the evolution of 
hominid dentition in the age of phenomics, 
modularity, and quantitative genetics. Annal 
Anat  DOI: 10.1016/j.aanat.2015.05.001. 

Irish JD, Guatelli-Steinberg D, Legge SS et al. 
(2014). Response to ‘Non-metric dental traits 
and hominin phylogeny’ by Carter et al., with 
additional information on the Arizona State 
University Dental Anthropology System and 
phylogenetic ‘place’ of Australopithecus sediba. 
J Hum Evol 69:129-135. 

Kelly MA and Larsen CS  ( 1991) Advances in Den-
tal Anthropology. New York: Wiley-Liss. 

Morin E, Speth JD, Lee-Thorp J (2016). Middle Pal-
aeolithic Diets: A Critical Examination of the 
Evidence. The Oxford Handbook of the Archae-
ology of Diet. DOI: 10.1093/
oxfordhb/97801199694013.013.24. 

Ozga  AT, Nieves-Colon MA, Honap TP et al. 
(2016). Successful enrichment and recovery of 
whole  mitochondrial genomes from ancient 
human dental calculus. Am J Phys Anthropol. 
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi:10.1002/
ajpa.22960. 

Retzius A. (1837). Bemerkungen uber den inneren 
Bau der Zhane. Arch Anat Phys Wissenschaft 
Med 1857. 486-566. 

Zink KD, Lieberman DE (2016). Impact of meat 
and Lower Palaeolithic food processing tech-
niques on chewing in humans. Nature  
doi:10.1038/nature16990.  

BOOK REVIEW 
 
A Companion to Dental Anthropology. Joel 
D. Irish and G. Richard Scott., editors. 
Published in Oxford by Wiley-Blackwell , 
2016. pp. xviii + 540. Illus. Indexed. ISBN 
978—1-118-84543-1, Price: US$195.00; 
Can$215.00, Ebook Can$172.99.