Dirty teeth and ancient trade: Evidence of cotton fibres in human dental calculus from Late Woodland, Ohio
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Analysis of ancient human dental calculus for the presence of inclusions related to diet and dental health has been overlooked in anthropological literature. Small particles of archaeobotanical debris, which would otherwise not be preserved in the archaeological record, can become incorporated into unmineralised plaque on teeth during mastication and oral manipulation. When plaque mineralises into calculus, debris is preserved in situ. Samples of dental calculus (n = 18) were collected from the Danbury site (33OT16) in Ottawa County, Ohio and viewed under a scanning electron microscope for inclusions. Analysis yielded a variety of noticeable inclusions, including mineralised bacteria, calcium‐phosphate crystalline structures and numerous phytoliths. Here we report the first evidence of fibres consistent with cotton (Gossypium spp.) embedded in the dental calculus from the Late Woodland component (900–1100 AD) of the Danbury site. Prehistoric cotton has not been previously documented in Ohio. The distinct morphology of the Danbury cotton and its presence in the Late Woodland component at Danbury suggests long‐distance interaction at a time in Ohio when movement of exotic goods appeared to have diminished. These microscopic remains provide insight into paleoethnobotanical history of ancient Ohioans and attest to how analysis of dental calculus could be used to supplement other paleodietary and archaeological analyses. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".