Etruscan Gold Dental

Etruscan Gold Dental Appliances: Three Newly "Discovered" Examples Author(s): Marshall Joseph Becker Reviewed work(s): Source: American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 103, No. 1 (Jan., 1999), pp. 103-111 Published by: Archaeological Institute of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/506579 . Accessed: 25/12/2012 22:17
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Etruscan Gold Dental Appliances: Three Newly "Discovered" Examples
MARSHALL JOSEPHBECKER
Abstract Dental appliances fashioned from flat gold bands are known from references in ancient Roman literatureand have been recovered from archaeological contexts since the late 18th century.Wire appliances of gold and silver are known from the eastern Mediterranean and have completely different origins and functions. Recent research on the known corpus of these ancient appliances, manyof which have been lost, provides considerable insight into their cultural uses as well as their place in dental history.Of considerableinterestare three Etruscan examples, now lost, that were brought to the United States in the 19th century. The origins and configurations of these three appliances are discussed here to augment what is known about other Etruscanexamples, of which only 20 can bedocumented and nine survive. All appear to have been used as decorative bands or to support replacements to one or both upper central incisors of women from whom healthy teeth had been removed deliberately.* The Etruscan origins of gold dental appliances, around the middle of the seventh century B.C., have long been recognized.1 These appliances are all fashioned from flat gold bands, and used tohold a false tooth or teeth in place or to stabilize teeth loosened by periodontal disease. Several lists of these appliances have been presented over the past century, but attempts to generate a complete catalogue have long been thwarted by the presence of numerous modern copies, poor descriptions in the literature, and by erroneous identifications of various other objects as examples of ancientdental work. * This project was conducted while I was a Consulting Scholar to the MediterraneanSection of the Universityof PennsylvaniaMuseum of Archaeology and Anthropology. I would like to thank Donald White, Curatorof Mediterranean Archaeology,for his encouragement and support of this research. My sincere thanks are also due John Bennet and an extremely careful anonymous AJA reviewer for theircontributions to the completion of this manuscript, and to the many other people who helped in so many different aspects of this research. Special thanks are due LarissaBonfante and Ingrid Edlund for their help in guiding this project in its earliest phases and to Lawrence Bliquez and John Robb for their generous sharing of imMany false examples of ancient dental appliances have been created bypublishing photographs of them upside down, or by reversing the negative in making a print. Thus a single object can be turned into four examples through errors in the making or use of a single photograph. The negative of an appliance believed to be fitted to the upper rightjaw, when printed backward, appears to represent an appliance from an upper left jaw. When inverted these two prints become...