Is It Just For Aesthetics? Looking at
the Reasons and Implications Behind Culturally Altered Dentition
Deliberate culturally instigated
modifications to the skeletal structure are not simply restricted to the widely-known
art of foot-binding, which was practiced in China up until the First World War
( Chang, 1991; p25 ). Skulls can be shaped from infancy, necks stretched and
earlobes widened, all in the name of achieving an aesthetically pleasing shape.
Such practices also have wider implications than on simple biological anatomy,
and can reveal much about the psychology and attitudes of the society which
implemented them. Of course, it is important to differentiate between
deliberate alteration of an individual’s morphology, and the accidental; it
should be noted that not all fractures, structural re-shaping or discolourings
are intentional.
Alterations to dentition is a widespread
form of deliberate modification; in the pursuit of various ideals of beauty,
teeth across the world are variously coloured and arranged. While aesthetics
are the most common reason cited for such behaviours, it is possible that these
artificial deformations represent far more within their indigenous cultures.
Within the field of dentistry, the essential functions of teeth, the lecturer
Clarke Johnson ( 1999 ) assures us, are ‘mastication, speech and aesthetics’.
Looking at the subject from an anthropologist’s point of view, Johnson can also
see that teeth also have a paramasticatory function, and can offer great
insight into the lives of their users.
‘I have a theory that all self-mutilation, right down to
tattoos and even ear-piercing, springs from a desire to symbolically, and
permanently, vandalise the perfection that your mother brought into the world.’
( Price, 1999; p163 )
The opinion put forward by the pop
historian Simon Price above, is a radical one – it is the considered view of
most that such practices have beautification as their prime goal, and while
non-participants may consider them ‘bodily-vandalism’, those personally
involved feel the end-product improves their appearance. Such an apparently
perverse desire as is detailed within Price’s theory seems to centre on a
perception of self as ugly; in this at least, his idea is in alignment with
common anthropological thought. Deliberate modification of one’s external
appearance is built on a desire to change, most commonly with improvement (
rather than worsening ) of form in mind. Such practices are typically enforced
by society – if not physically, through customs and rituals, then in a more
subtle way, through the mass media. Cultural ‘norms’ are seen to be embodied by
one’s family members and other persons of importance – their standards are
passed on to their children along with beauty ideals.
Straightening braces and abrasive
tooth-cleaning procedures are seen as acceptable in the West just as elsewhere
in the world, tooth removal and grooved decoration is highly venerated;
although unpleasant for the patient, it is considered such an improvement to
the individual’s appearance is worth the cost of such actions.
Within the West, our ideal of dental beauty
is based around a full-complement of straight white teeth, and retaining such
an appearance gives dentists and orthodontists a healthy living ( Scott &
Turner, 1997; xv ). Indeed, it is notable that, for Americans, the state of
British teeth are deemed laughable – the yellow-stained buck-toothed appearance
of Mike Myers’ super-spy in the film ‘Austin Powers’ is an American satire
based on this conception.
While the most common form of dental
modification – particularly in the West – is health-orientated, and intends to
protect and rebuild, deliberate decorations of the teeth are a very close
second. ‘Dental mutilation’ of this ilk is a custom and ritual evident across
the globe for thousands of years, ‘in the Americas, parts of Eastern Asia and
Oceania, and Africa’ ( Hillson, 1996; p251 ), and is still seen today in parts
of Africa and Australia ( Johnson, 1999 ).
Because the mouth – as ‘primary social organ’
– constantly draws attention to itself, great import is attached to the
appearance of one’s teeth, particularly the highly visible incisors and the
canines ( Scott & Turner, 1997; xv ). Johnson ( 1999 ) feels biological
health – and, concurrently, sexual appeal – is signalled by an attractive and
symmetrical smile; it is in pursuit of this that many will subject their mouths
to the modifications of others. There are several ways in which artificial deformation
of one’s dentition can be practiced: ablation, or the intentional removal of
teeth, and also the modification of crown form through ‘filing, incising,
chipping, staining, banding, and insetting’ ( Scott & Turner, 1997; xv ). The words ‘scarification’ and mutilation’
are sometimes used in literature on dental anthropology to describe these
practices, both of which harsh terms easily convey the West’s antipathy towards
such customs. For anthropologists and other outsiders to note certain body modifications
as ‘mutilations’ or ‘deformations’ is to register their disapproval of such
practices ( and often the appearances themselves ), whether subconsciously or
no ( Eicher & Boach-Higgins, 1992; p14 ).
Certain forms of dental modification may,
of course, be accidental. The approximal grooves on distal or medial teeth
surfaces – which are themselves a common archaeological find – are most
probably caused by the use of hard tooth-cleaning implements such as
tooth-picks or similar, or by the ‘stripping of animal sinews between the
clenched cheek teeth’ ( Hillson, 1996; p251 ). The ‘Archaic peoples’ who
inhabited America’s Great Plains showed excessive amounts of dental wear (
Wisner, 1997 ), presumably because of a combination of a diet which required heavy
mastication, and their lifestyle itself, which utilised their teeth as tools.
As the Nenets of eastern Siberia use their teeth to chew reindeer tendons into
thread ( Montaigne, 1998; p130 ) so parallel actions could be seen by those
Plains Indians who rely on the bison for their the sustaining of their
livelihood. These Great Basin Indians of Nevada have highly polished and
grooved teeth because they are used in processing plant fibres for basketry
purposes – indeed, Larsen ( 1999 ) has found that virtually all occlusal
surface grooves in anterior teeth are found in New World foragers ( Johnson,
1999 ).
Other accidental modifications of the teeth
can occur due to occlusal clamping of a pipe and the wearing of labrets (
Johnson, 1999 ). Those who wore these labrets, such as the Native North
Americans, would be wearing away their own enamel with these plugs of stone,
ivory or gold ( Hillson, 1996; p252 ).
Discolouring is another form of dental modification
which can appear accidentally. While some people do deliberately stain their
teeth, most smokers, for example, are not trying to dye their dental
work yellow. Incidental tooth-staining is also noted amongst the Mariana
islanders in Western Micronesia – the practice of chewing betel-nut stains the
teeth a light reddish-brown, which may have proved a prompt for their abrasive
cleaning techniques. It is suggested that as stained teeth are found to be
three-to-five times less hard than other teeth, the practice of staining was
deliberately employed to soften teeth prior to incision or abrasion (
Ikehara-Quebral & Douglas, 1997; p382-3, 388 ).
There are those,
however, who do deliberately discolour their teeth. Among the population of
Alor, it is traditional for adolescent boys and girls to have their teeth
blackened and, if it is their ‘time’, filed by a young unmarried man of their
village, in July or August. The man prepares a paste and smears it onto a strip
of banana bark which the children wear pressed against their teeth for at least
a week. At the end of this period, the same individual uses a knife to halve
the size of the front six upper and lower teeth of those ‘ready’ to have their
teeth filed. As a result of this filing, the tongue is always visible when the
mouth is open, even when the back teeth are occluded. This is considered very
attractive ( Dubois, 1944; p83-4 ).
Like the Alor, the Iban
people of Borneo also blacken and file their front teeth in the name of
appearance. However, the filing is done in such a way that the front teeth
become viciously pointed, and the whole face acquires a dog-like look. The Iban
also like to drill a hole in the front teeth and affix a brass stud to each of
them, a process of exquisite pain apparently counter-balanced by the kudos the
appearance brings ( Gomes, 1911; p38 ).
In French colonial Annam
( now Viet Nam ), deliberate staining of the teeth is also practiced as a
beautification ritual ( Johnson, 1999 ). For the Annamese, who marry early, it
is traditional to lacquer their teeth black in a painful beautification process
before they can be seen as adult enough to be wed. Within their culture, an
Annamese person with white teeth is not only ugly but also immoral – it is
usually only a white man’s mistress who retains her white teeth. Were she
trying to woo a man of her own culture, she would need to first lacquer her
teeth jet-black ( Frank, 1926; p168-9 ).
It is evident from these examples that
dental modification is often a signifier of marriageable position, acting as a
highly visual indication of new-found adult status. However, such indicators
are not restricted to simple blackening of teeth. At the beginning of the
century, upon reaching puberty it was customary for the Moi of Vietnam to have
all of their teeth removed. A relative would forcibly file and chip away at the
dentition right down to the gums until the ‘patient’ is wholly toothless –
after this, he or she will then be expected to continue the practice themselves
using a stone. This custom is intended to make the adolescent beautiful –
without it, the individual could be considered neither an adult, nor of
marriageable status ( Frank, 1926; p90-1 ). Such a practice is comparable to
that of certain healers in Indochina, amongst whom many years ago it was
traditional to have their incisors ground down to the gum line ( Johnson, 1999
).
Grooving of the teeth is perhaps more
common than filing or discolouration; indeed, the most long-standing form of
mutilation in the Americas is the geometrically variable alteration of the
contours of the dental crown ( Johnson, 1999 ).
One of the styles of dental modification
practiced by the Mariana Islanders is ‘horizontal abrading’, whereby the
‘transverse back-and-forth motion’ of a blunted or rounded tool results in
either a concave tooth, or one which has an extensively grooved surface. Both
intentional and unintentional abrasion of this kind is to be noted among the
Mariana Islanders, whose methods of dental cleaning can also produce the same
modifications, although not on the mandibular teeth. Such methods include the
inventive use of a burnt stick, a mixture of ash or sand, a pumice, or the
internal shell of a squid or cuttlefish ( Ikehara-Quebral & Douglas, 1997;
p382 ). Another style of dental modification utilised by the Mariana Islanders
is ‘incising’, whereby a sharp implement is used to cut thin grooves at
vertical and diagonal angles into the teeth. ( Ikehara-Quebral & Douglas,
1997; p382 ) It is hypothesised that sturdy materials such as chert ( itself
harder than volcanic glass ) or basalt – flakes of which have been found at
archaeological sites – were utilised in this process ( Ikehara-Quebral &
Douglas, 1997; p383 ). Three different
patterns of labial incising on the base of the tooth have been noted in the
surveyed samples from the Mariana Islands; that of a single set of vertical
lines, a set of diagonal or oblique lines, and a diagonally latticed or
cross-hatched pattern. Of these three types, the latter is the most common. The
number of lines per set varies from two to eight, within these samples (
Ikehara-Quebral & Douglas, 1997; p386 ).
In the West,
intentional grooving of the teeth is not a common practice – ornamentation of
the teeth, however, is gradually becoming so. The musician and actor Goldie,
pictured right, is a Western exemplar of this embrace of dental decoration; his
stage-moniker is taken from a nickname he was given because of his teeth.
Goldie has several gold teeth, six of which are inset with diamonds so as to
spell out his name. Because of this ornamentation, he now looks both rich and
wolfishly worrying, and his appearance seems more aggressive; his inlays are
both confrontational and a status symbol. In Britain in the early Nineties, Goldie’s
dental modifications made him unusual – however, gold teeth and jewel inlays
were fashionable in Mesoamerica over two-thousand years ago ( Johnson, 1999 ).
Archaeological
digs in 1996 at Laguna de On Island found only one group of skeletal remains,
both male and female, which exhibited signs of tooth filing. From the prominent
positioning of this burial ground, the population of this island, which were
Mayan in origin, appear to have only practiced such deliberate modification of
the dental structure on the most important and highest-ranking individuals.
Anthropologists have long been convinced that, in accordance with the
ethnographic record, this island epitomises and defines Mayan social and
political identity ( Masson, 1996 ). It could, therefore, be postulated that it
was only those of an elevated position in Mesoamerican society who had such
decorated teeth. Many others in this field have arrived at similar conclusions,
looking at evidence from different sites – the use of precious stones in dental
modification is particularly telling in this field. Johnson ( 1999 ) feels the
most impressive – in aesthetic terms – of the ‘dental mutilations’ practiced in
Mesoamererica to be the jewelled-inlay incrustations of the teeth, whereby
substances such as pyrite, jadeite, turquois, or gold would be set into the
labial surface. It is thought that, in order to achieve this, a fine tube of
quartz or other highly resistant stone would be rotated against the enamel with
the addition of water, and ‘some abrasive powder or fine sand would drill out the receptacle in the enamel to receive
the inlay’. This technique required great skill, and probably began in the
Pre-Classic Period, 100 BC - 300 AD. The picture ( right ) of this practice,
dated 700-900 AD, demonstrates both the jewel inlays and also the Late Classic
design which was typical of the Mayan artisans. Such an expensive practice
would only have been available to those who could afford it – the skeletons
uncovered with jewel insets in their mouths are literally wearing their wealth.
The cultural modification of tooth crowns
can also provide us with insight as to the migration patterns of their owners.
When groups of people move ( or are moved ) from one location to another, they
often retain their customs and practices, as is evident in many immigrant
communities within this country. Several anthropologists have noted that the
West Africans who were forcibly transplanted to the Caribbean and South America
between the Sixteenth and Eighteenth Centuries, although the tradition was not
maintained as vociferously as it would have been in their native land, they did
continue their practice of filing the anterior teeth into points. It is thought
that the American Southwest skeletons who show evidence of dental mutilation
were in fact Mesoamerican traders, as the practice was common in pre-Columbian
Mesoamerica, although not the Southwest. It is also thought that certain
specialised patterns of tooth extraction seen in the 17,000 BP Minatogwa
population of Okinawa could link them to the 12,500-2,200BP Japanese Jomon
people, and possibly even to some Neolithic settlements in China ( Scott &
Turner, 1997; xviii-xix ). Evidently, dental modification can be used by people
as a tool by which they can retain their cultural identity. Even for a slave
population, while others may dress you, give you a new language and change your
religion, actual bodily modification practices are far harder to prevent.
Unlike the practice of Chinese
foot-binding, modification of teeth does not seem to be a custom typical of one
gender. Equally, it cannot be seen as a method of control through painful
bondage, as it is frequently typical of individuals of high-status. All the
societies found to practice filing and colouring of teeth do so on adults – for
most, ablation is also restricted to the adult population. Like many, in the
Mariana Islands, the cultural alteration of teeth is primarily performed for
cosmetic purposes, but also gives an indication of status within a ranked
hierarchical society, and is a marker of both a rite of passage and membership
within a particular group or lineage ( Ikehara-Quebral & Douglas, 1997;
p381, 389 ). Dental anthropology which focuses on artificially modified teeth
can therefore inform us not only about ideals of beauty, but also of rituals,
groupings and hierarchy within a specific society, and that society’s origins.
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Last revised: 28/07/01