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Sex- and status-based differences in medieval food preparation and consumption: dental microwear analysis at Trino Vercellese, Italy

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Abstract

Food preparation is of key importance in the medieval period where the manner of preparing ingredients had major sociocultural significance. We examine sex- and status-based differences in dental occlusal microwear from a human skeletal population from medieval Trino Vercellese, Italy, to assess intrapopulation differences in food preparation. We compare microwear results with previously reported stable carbon and nitrogen isotope data to determine the extent to which these two methods for dietary reconstruction correspond. Epoxy casts of second molars from 27 males and females of high- and low-status from medieval Trino Vercellese, Italy, were studied using field emission scanning electron microscopy. Feature tally, pit percentage, pit width, and striation width are compared between subgroups. Whereas previous isotopic data identified low-status males as outliers, dental microwear analysis indicates no differences in diet between the four sex- and status-based subgroups. However, the percentage of pitting is statistically different between males and females when status groups are pooled, with males exhibiting significantly higher values (p = 0.017). When sexes are pooled, low-status individuals are found to have significantly more features compared with high-status individuals (p = 0.030). This study demonstrates the applicability of dental microwear analysis for uncovering intra-group dietary patterns in socially stratified societies.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Emma Rabino Massa, Director of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in Turin, for granting permission to work with these materials. We also thank the Georgia Electron Microscopy Center at the University of Georgia for their assistance with this project. We also thank the anonymous reviewers who provided feedback on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 30602, USA

    April K. Smith & Laurie J. Reitsema

  2. Department of Anthropology, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, 30303, USA

    Frank L’Engle Williams

  3. Department of Life Sciences and Systems Biology, University of Torino, 10123, Turin, Italy

    Rosa Boano

  4. Department of Anthropology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA

    Giuseppe Vercellotti

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  1. April K. Smith
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  2. Laurie J. Reitsema
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Correspondence to April K. Smith.

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Appendix. Trino Vercellese

Appendix. Trino Vercellese

Table 4 Mann-Whitney U test results for upper vs. lower M2s
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Smith, A.K., Reitsema, L.J., Williams, F.L. et al. Sex- and status-based differences in medieval food preparation and consumption: dental microwear analysis at Trino Vercellese, Italy. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 11, 4789–4800 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-019-00838-z

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