Review of Previous Studies on Dental Wear Method

Tooth wear records valuable information ranging from diets to cultural behaviors such as using teeth as a tool. However, methods analyzing tooth wear in archaeological skeletal remains have been designed and developed with subjective standards and processes. In addition, the definition of measuring range is different by each method and some have not specified it exactly. For this reason, there are limits to attempt a comparison between studies using different types of tooth wear methods even though data on tooth wear in ancient populations have been accumulated for many years. To solve this problem, it is needed to establish a method that can objectively diagnose tooth wear. This study aims to examine systematically a variety of tooth wear methods which have been developed from an anthropological point of view and to consider limitations of each method. A total of 20 research papers which describe a new dental wear method or advanced one were included in this review and then classified into two categories based on the properties of the measurement value, which means both qualitative and quantitative methods of dental wear. Qualitative wear methods were examined according to two subdivisions (1 entire pattern on the occlusal surface, 2 sum of quadrants on the occlusal surface). On the other hand, quantitative wear methods were divided into three classifications (1 angle, 2 height 3 area) and each category was reviewed. This approach enables to help understand the trend about methods for analyzing tooth wear, and would contribute to establishing an objective tooth wear method by more standardized criteria in the near future.