Matskási István (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 95. (Budapest 2003)

Évinger, S.: Paleostomatological investigation of the anthropological findings from the Avar period cemeteries of Toponár and Fészerlak

frequency of carious teeth was 21.05% in the maturus age group. A possible reason for this result can be the following. In the case of juveniles, there was not enough time for "evolving" a great number of caries, while most of the carious teeth of the matures could have fallen out due to the greatly progressed alterations which had developed earlier. Of course, other reasons could have caused losing of teeth (abrasion, periodontological diseases etc.), but among the teeth lost this way might have been a lot of carious as well. Females had more carious teeth than males (Table 4). The differences in the number of tooth decays between genders and among the age groups were not considerable. Several of the adult females had a very poor dental status, which is revealed by the average number of carious teeth per affected individual, which was the highest with them (Table 3). 68.6% of the 70 individuals had premortem lost teeth (Table 2). The frequency was significantly increasing with age. The number of premortem lost teeth was increasing with age too (Table 3), but the differences were not significant. Between the genders, there was only a slight difference in the number of the affected indiviuals, but females lost much more teeth intra vitam than males (Table 4). Some of the adult females had no teeth (Fig. 2) or only a few teeth due to some kind of disease(s). The average number of premortem lost teeth per affected individual (Table 3), which has the highest value with them, refers to this. We found cysta/abscessus with 44.3% of the individuals (Table 2). The number of cystae and abscessi comparing to the examinable jaw-surface was 3.32% (Table 3). The females from the adultus age group had a vast number of cystae/ abscessi and the average number of this type of alteration per affected person was the highest with them, too. For example, a young adult female from the grave No. 106 (Fig. 3) had 11 cystae/abscessi due to some kind of very severe disease. Observing the Table 3, it is noticeable that the frequencies of tooth decays and the frequencies of cystae/abscessi are directly proportional to each other in all age groups. This result supports the idea that most of the cystae/abscessi are aftermaths of carious lesions. Among the 61 people fit for the examination of enamel hypoplasia, the frequency of this alteration was 57.4% (Table 2). 38.85% of the front teeth showed the marks of hypoplasia (Fig. 4). Enamel hypoplasias are results of pathological amelogenezis and they can be forming only during the development of teeth. After this process, the hypoplastic lines become fixed and never change anymore. Because of it, we presumed that we could find differences only between the genders, and the frequencies would be very similar among the age groups within a gender. The difference in the percentage of skulls with enamel hypoplasia between males and females was insignificant, but the number of hypoplastic teeth was strikingly small (Table 3) in the group of adult females. On the other hand, considering the