How to make a replica of 10,000 year old teeth? Wonder no more!

Occasionally, people wonder what it is a dental anthropologist does. Not often, mind. And if they do make the mistake of asking, generally eyes glaze over before you can say 'hydroxyapatite'.

So as you can imagine, I get a bit overexcited when people seem to actually want to know how one goes about the business of being the Tooth Fairy.  I've just come back from Turkey, where I've been studying human remains from the beautiful early Neolithic site of Asıklı Höyük, home to the first farmers and earliest settlement of the Anatolian plateau.




My mission was to take casts of the teeth, to address questions about childhood health and growth. One of the first queries I got from my fellow archaeologists however, was what, exactly, I actually do -- so I made this little instructional video for the benefit of the lab, and hopefully future students in the biological anthropology program at Hacateppe University.



Dental Impressions from Brenna Hassett on Vimeo.

So now, you know. The life of a tooth fairy is a strange one, and often accompanied by Glenn Miller.

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