Seeing a Forest from the Teeth: Establishing Ancient Diet through Analysis of Dental Calculus

The Nanchoc valley in the northern Peruvian Andes was an important locus for early cultivation of several major crop plants in the late Pleistocene and Holocene New World. Macrobotanical and archaeological evidence from the region has indicated that members of the Nanchoc culture engaged in a mixed subsistence economy, combining wild and cultivated foods into a broad diet. To determine which cultigens were major dietary components, Dolores Piperno and Tom Dillehay analyzed a promising yet largely ignored medium for establishing ancient diet--tooth calculus or calcified dental plaque.