3. Materials and Methods

Teeth were sampled from 26 human skeletons from the Eindhoven cemetery, representing different time periods and preservation states. To minimise damage to the remains, loose teeth were sampled where available. Information on whether or not teeth were in situ within the jaw, or loose, is noted in Table 1, along with a summary of the sample descriptions. The site and the skeletal material are described in Hollund et al. (2012a). A cattle tooth was sampled from the Mesolithic causewayed enclosure site at Champ Durand in southern France. Here, large cattle bone assemblages were found in the ditches surrounding the enclosure (Feulner et al. 2012). Another set of teeth, three human and one cattle, was available from the Roman period cemetery in Castricum, the Netherlands. A description of this site can be found in Hollund et al. (2012b). Human teeth were also sampled from two environmentally very different sites; a recently excavated 16th-century cemetery in the city of Zwolle, the Netherlands and a Bronze Age burial on Sai island in the Nile river, Sudan (Nubia). The site locations are shown in Figure 1.

The teeth were prepared as thin-sections for light microscopy. Three samples were also prepared as polished blocks for scanning electron microscopy (SEM), which allowed chemical analyses by energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX). Sample preparation protocols and analytical equipment is described in Hollund et al. (2012b) and Hollund (2013), but in short involved impregnation with a two-component epoxy and using a grinding machine equipped with a diamond grinding wheel to produce thin-sections. The SEM-EDX equipment used was a JEOL JSM-59101V fitted with an EDS detector from Thermo Scientific and Noran System Seven software.