Teeth - biodiversity in the natural history collection
In the Szekler Museum of Ciuc, the artefact of the month of May was inspired by the World Biodiversity Day celebrated on 22nd May. To mark the occasion, we will present 9 types of animal jaws/dentition from our natural history collection, with a special focus on their diversity, both in our museum collection and in the world of animals living in our region throughout the ages.
The two extremes in terms of size are represented by a mammoth and a carp, one being the fossilised jaw with a molar tooth of a herbivorous mammal, which has been extinct for thousands of years, and the other being the pharyngeal dentition of a fish species still alive today. In between these two, we also see the jaws of wild and domestic herbivores – horse, cattle, deer –, wild and domestic carnivores – fox, cat – and the mandibles of a domestic pig and a rabbit. They come from different places and eras, and the animals themselves were of different ages and sexes. For example, the cattle's jaw is from a young individual, as milk teeth can be seen in the bone. The pig's mandible also comes from a young animal, as its incisors are on growing 'just now'. They could hardly be more varied, yet today they are in the same collection and one of their main uses is to facilitate the study of archaeozoology.
Archaeozoology, through the remains of animals recovered from archaeological excavations, is primarily concerned with human communities rather than animals themselves. By grouping finds according to species, age, sex, etc., it tries to deduce which animal species were hunted/kept by different groups of people in different periods, what strategies were used to slaughter them, how their meat, or even their skins, bones and other secondary products were used.
