This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
This award permits Dr. Christopher Schmidt to purchase a Sensofar While Light Confocal Imaging Profiler to be housed in the Indiana Prehistory Laboratory at the University of Indianapolis. The instrument will be used to create three dimentional models of dental occlusal facets at magnifications suitable for dietary reconstruction of archaeologically-derived human specimens. In the process of mastication, microscopic alterations occur on the enamel surface and these are, it is believed, related to the qualities such as hardness and shape of the foods consumed. Traditional techniques employed to measure such enamel damage incorporate a significant subjective component and the confocal profiler can overcome this problem. The instrument will initially be used to address the question: how does diet affect teeth at the microscopic level. Dr. Schmidt will quantify the frequency, size, shape and orientation of microscopic pits and scratches on a group of over 1,000 samples from prehistoric agricultural, horticultural, pastoral, foraging and fishing communities from across the globe. This effort will provide a much needed baseline for future studies of recent historic and prehistoric groups. It will also generate models for interpreting the diets of Ice Age populations which frequently lack the better preserved subsistence evidence found at more recent sites. Dr. Schmidt will also examine the relationship between overall dental macrowear and microwear. This award therefore will permit the application of an emerging, powerful and promising technology to questions a central archaeological concern.
The potential impact of this instrumentation is broad and includes ten primary collaborators who shall provide samples from North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. An additional four colleagues on the University of Indianapolis campus also plan to use the instrumentation and both graduate and undergraduate students will have access to the profiler. Students in dental science, skeletal biology, microbiology and plant science will also find the instrument research relevant.
