Reconstructing Dietary Patterns Through Dental Caries And Wear: Hamaç Höyük Assemblage

Dental caries and wear provide important evidence for reconstructing dietary habits, food preparation techniques, and subsistence strategies in past populations. Particularly in communities such as Hamaç Höyük, where dietary practices are insufficiently documented, these biological indicators provide important insights. This study investigates how diet and culinary practices influenced both the biological and social aspects of the settlement. Macroscopic examination revealed carious lesions in 10.9% of adult teeth, suggesting a diet rich in carbohydrates and sugars. Dental wear was can be considered as slight (grades 2–3, x̄ = 2.62) and demonstrated a significant positive correlation with advancing age, but differences between sexes were not statistically significant. Compared with contemporaneous medieval Anatolian populations, the prevalence of caries and the degree of wear broadly consistent however, the demographic predominance of middle adults in this sample may account for the relatively lower wear values. Overall, the results suggest a diet that may have included cariogenic foods, particularly carbohydrate-rich resources, while also indicating that dental wear and caries patterns are influenced by both subsistence strategies and demographic composition.