Skip to content
Account Login Winnipeg Toll-Free: 1-800-561-1833 SK Toll-Free: 1-877-506-7456 Contact & Locations
parsed(2025-01-07) - pubdate: 2025-01-07
turn:
pub date: 1736229600
today: 1730872800, pubdate > today = true

nyp: 1;

Ancient Maya Teeth

Dental Modification, Cosmology, and Social Identity in Mesoamerica

January 7, 2025 | Hardcover
ISBN: 9781477327579
$75.00
Reader Reward Price: $67.50 info
We will confirm the estimated shipping time with you when we process your order.
Checking Availibility...

This title will be released on Jan 7, 2025. Pre-order now.

Description

A study of Maya dental modification from archaeological sites spanning three millennia.

Dental modification was common across ancient societies, but perhaps none were more avid practitioners than the Maya. They filed their teeth flat or pointy, polished and drilled them, and crafted decorative inlays of jade and pyrite. Unusually, Maya of all social classes, ages, and professions engaged in dental modification. What did it mean to them?

Ancient Maya Teeth is the most comprehensive study of Maya dental modification ever published, based on thousands of teeth recovered from 130 sites spanning three millennia. Esteemed archaeologist Vera Tiesler sifts the evidence, much of it gathered with her own hands and illustrated here with more than a hundred photographs. Exploring the underlying theory and practice of dental modification, Tiesler raises key questions. How did modifications vary across the individual's lifespan? What tools were used? How did the Maya deal with pain--and malpractice? How did they keep their dentitions healthy, functioning, and beautiful? What were the relationships among gender, social identity, and religious identifications? Addressing these and other issues, Ancient Maya Teeth reveals how dental-modification customs shifted over the centuries, indexing other significant developments in Mayan cultural history.

About this Author

Vera Tiesler is a leading bioarchaeologist and a research professor at the Autonomous University of Yucatán, where she heads the Laboratory of Bioarchaeology. She is the author of The Bioarchaeology of Artificial Cranial Modifications: New Approaches to Head Shaping and its Meanings in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and Beyond.

ISBN: 9781477327579
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2025-01-07

If the product is in stock at the store nearest you, we suggest you call ahead to have it set aside for you, or you may place an order online and choose in-store pickup.