A Bayesian approach to the estimation of the age of humans from tooth development and wear

Millard, A.; Gowland, R.

A Bayesian approach to the estimation of the age of humans from tooth development and wear

Millard, A.; Gowland, R.

Authors

Dr Andrew Millard a.r.millard@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor

R. Gowland

Abstract

Examination of dental development is considered to be an accurate method of ageing non-adults, but ageing adults from dental wear is much less accurate. Miles’ method is generally accepted to be the best way we have to derive estimates of tooth-wear ages because it takes into account population variability in wear-rates. Here we develop a Bayesian approach to ageing from dental development and tooth-wear, using a latent trait model and logistic regression to estimate the ages of individuals whose tooth development and/or wear has been scored on ordinal scales. In addition to the original methods this: (a) accounts for uncertainties in tooth development; (b) incorporates in a natural fashion individuals with teeth missing post-mortem. Numerical integrations were performed using Markov-Chain Monte-Carlo techniques and WinBUGS software.

Citation

Millard, A., & Gowland, R. (2002). A Bayesian approach to the estimation of the age of humans from tooth development and wear. Archeologia e calcolatori (Testo stampato), 13, 197-210

Journal Article Type	Article
Publication Date	Nov 1, 2002
Deposit Date	Jun 26, 2009
Publicly Available Date	Jul 13, 2009
Journal	Archeologia e calcolatori.
Print ISSN	1120-6861
Publisher	Edizioni all'Insegna del Giglio
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	13
Pages	197-210
Publisher URL	http://www.progettocaere.rm.cnr.it/databasegestione/open_oai_page.asp?id=oai:www.progettocaere.rm.cnr.it/databasegestione/A_C_oai_Archive.xml:331