Aging mountain gazelle (Gazella gazella): refining methods of tooth eruption and wear and bone fusion

This paper refines current methods for aging mountain gazelle (Gazella gazella), one of the most common species hunted by prehistoric humans in the southern Levant. Most importantly, we present a new tooth wear scheme for aging the lower deciduous fourth premolar (dP₄), the lower permanent molars (M₁, M₂, M₃) and the lower fourth premolar (P₄) of the gazelle. Broader wear stages for complete mandibles and individual teeth and bone fusion stages are also provided. Finally, a comparison of the tooth wear and bone fusion data indicates that the two methods can be linked at the important transition when a gazelle reaches adulthood (ca. 18 months of age). The completion of the fusion of the gazelle skeleton corresponds directly to the replacement of the dP₄ by the P₄ and the beginning of wear of the M₃. The coincidence of these aging indicators allows for direct comparison of gazelle bone fusion and tooth wear data.     

The Sheep Project (1): determining skeletal growth,timing of epiphyseal fusion and morphometric variation in unimproved Shetland sheep of known age,sex, castration status and nutrition

The Sheep Project was designed to investigate the effects of castration, breeding age and nutritional plane on bone growth, epiphyseal fusion, tooth eruption and tooth wear in sheep. The project investigates a population of 356 unimproved Shetland sheep skeletons evenly distributed between females bred at different ages, males and castrates, raised on either high or low nutritional planes. This first instalment focuses on two aspects of our larger study, namely bone growth and epiphyseal fusion as affected by sex, castration and nutrition. Nutrition, sex and castration are shown to influence bone growth in ways that are often element-dependant and not consistent through time. We demonstrate that metric variability (variance) is strongest in males, with little difference between females and castrates, and that, in our sample, nutrition has little influence on variance in any sex cohort. Of importance to the development of models of past animal management this study demonstrates that the standard epiphyseal fusion ranges used by zooarchaeologists are too narrow in most instances and do not account for the large variation between sexes or the lesser variation between planes of nutrition. We recommend methods for recognizing castration and the presence of more than one sheep breed, or type, within the zooarchaeological record.