Marina Lozano

• Ph.D.
• Researcher at Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social

Who the first inhabitants of Western Europe were, what their physical characteristics were, and when and where they lived are some of the pending questions in the study of the settlement of Eurasia during the Early Pleistocene epoch. The available palaeoanthropological information from Western Europe is limited and confined to the Iberian Peninsula...

Objective: To develop a specific methodology for identifying dental chipping and determining its temporal occurrence in past populations. Design: The analysed sample comprised of 2,191 human teeth from various Bronze Age on the Iberian Peninsula (Argar culture, 1900–1450 cal BC). Among these, 471 chipped teeth were identified. Chipping was examined...

El uso de la dentición como tercera mano puede dejar desgastes extramasticatorios que revelan información sobre las distintas actividades ocupacionales que llevaron a cabo las poblaciones pasadas. Entre los diferentes rasgos de desgaste destaca la presencia de surcos oclusales o en los laterales del diente bien documentados en series osteológicas p...

Objectives We report the discovery and description of three human teeth from the Middle Paleolithic archaeological levels of Arbreda Cave (Serinyà, Catalonia, NE Iberian Peninsula). Materials and Methods The teeth, two molars (one right dm 2 and one right M 2 ) from Level N (older than 120 kyr) and one P ³ from Level J (dated between 71 and 44 kyr...

The dietary habits of Neanderthals are considered an issue of great interest in the literature and have opened an important number of fruitful debates. Indeed, understanding diets can provide important information regarding issues of palaeoenvironmental reconstructions and subsistence strategies. In this respect, dental remains can play a vital rol...

Los lascados dentales (chippings) corresponden a pequeñas fracturas del esmalte, que en algunas ocasiones también involucran a la dentina y que son resultado de puntos de sobrecarga de fuerza en los bordes del diente. Dichas fracturas han sido vinculadas a golpes, inclusiones de elementos duros procedentes de los alimentos, bien de la preparación d...

: Los lascados o chipping son un tipo de fractura dental que corresponde al grupo de fracturas no complidas que afectan a los bordes de los dientes. Se trata de un tipo de daño que, según su distribución en la dentición, se ha asociado al tipo de dieta y al uso extramasticatorio de la boca, ambos tópicos desarrollados en series de la Prehistoria y...

Dental and oral status is a valuable indicator of health, diet, and lifestyle of past populations. The assessment and diagnosis of bucco-dental pathologies has been improved through advances in microscopy applied to external surface observations. However, some of these microscopy analyses are not only expensive but also time-consuming and not alway...

Objective This study seeks to contribute to the current understanding of dietary variation in the late Prehistory of the northeastern Iberian Peninsula by examining buccal dental microwear patterns alongside archeological data from the same populations. Materials and Methods Teeth from 84 adult individuals from eight distinct samples spanning the...

Anthropological and paleopathological study of the human remains recovered from Vallone Inferno site (Sicily), including the estimation of the minimum number of individuals, bone pathologies such as antemortem trauma, dental pathologies, and non-masticatory tooth wear.

Objective: Molar incisor hypomineralisation (MIH) is a developmental defect of enamel affecting the first permanent molars and often the incisors and affecting approximately 13% of the current population worldwide. Here, we aim to highlight potential differential diagnoses of MIH in archaeological collections (taphonomic discoloration, amelogenesi...

Objectives We reassess the taxonomic assignment and stratigraphic context of a permanent upper first molar and a permanent lower third premolar recovered from the archeological site of Lezetxiki in the North of the Iberian Peninsula. Materials and Methods We assessed the external and internal morphology of the teeth using qualitative descriptions...

This work presents the results of a combination of different proxies, such as animal and plant remains, isotope analysis, and dental microwear, for the different chrono-cultural phases recorded at El Mirador cave. Together, they offer an overview of the economic and dietary practices of the groups that made use of the cave, which are especially int...

The dental and oral pathologies of the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age herders from El Mirador cave indicate good general oral health in both populations as deduced from the low prevalence of pathologies such as dental caries, dental calculus, linear enamel hypoplasia, periodontal disease and abscesses. In both groups, older individuals exhibit t...

ABSTRACT Neolithisation process arrived at the Iberian Peninsula (IP) around 5,500 calBC, having diverse impacts on genomic and cultural diversity. During the Late Neolithic–Chalcolithic, changes occurred at funerary and cultural material level, with also evidence of narrower exchange networks. Genomic diversity decrease at this period suggests hum...

Neolithisation was a relatively fast process that affected both the interior and coastal zones of the Iberian Peninsula, but it was also a heterogeneous process that had diverse impacts on genomic and cultural diversity. In the Late Neolithic–Chalcolithic, a change in funerary practices, cultural material and trade networks occurred, and genomic he...

Objectives This study analyzes and compares dental microwear textures on occlusal and buccal surfaces from the same tooth to determine if using these surfaces in tandem can provide complementary data for dietary reconstructions. Materials and methods Cova de la Guineu is a Late Neolithic‐Chalcolithic burial cave located in Font‐Rubí (Barcelona, Sp...

Background The analysis and diagnosis of ancient oral pathologies have been improved with the application of new techniques such as microscopy and scanning methods over the past few decades. However, the enhancement of the diagnosis implies a prior knowledge of the availability and suitability of such equipments. Methods In this work we examined 3...

Dietary reconstruction is used to make inferences about the subsistence strategies of ancient human populations, but it may also serve as a proxy to characterise their diverse cultural and technological manifestations. Dental microwear and stable isotope analyses have been shown to be successful techniques for paleodietary reconstruction of ancient...

The macroscopic and microscopic analyses of teeth from the Castellón Alto individuals belonging to El Argar culture (Southeastern Iberia), dated from Bronze Age, were carried out to identify non-alimentary uses of teeth and the tasks associated with the use of teeth as tools. Macroscopically, we identify 5 out of 106 individuals showing atypical de...

In order to better understand the causes and geographic patterns of Neanderthal demise it is necessary to broaden the focus of existing Neanderthal studies to include new sites from understudied regions, particularly those containing multi-level fossil and lithic records, and to improve regional-scale Neanderthal extinction frameworks using multipl...

Degenerative joint disease (DJD) is one of the most common pathological conditions identified in the archaeological record and remains a health problem in modern populations. This study aimed to evaluate DJD of the vertebral column in a sample from a Chalcolithic collective burial at El Mirador cave (Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain) dated to 4,880–4,390...

Farming was one of the most significant events in human history, driving major biological and cultural change globally. The peasant way of life arrived in the Iberian Peninsula (IP) about 7500 years ago, during the Early Neolithic. It was a relatively fast process that affected both the interior and coastal zones, but it was also a heterogeneous pr...

Gigapixel and gigapixel-like (GPL) imaging strategies are a powerful means of communicating scientific results of visual observations in academic and public spheres. GPL images are made from a photomosaic of multiple, adjacent extended focus images, which allows users to “pan and zoom” across a surface to document or analyze specific features. Micr...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Dental microwear has been used for the reconstruction of diet for decades, and given its long history, substantial changes in the methodologies and technologies used to observe and quantify microwear have occurred. For instance, early work on microwear used optical microscopy (OM), before being largely replaced by scanning electron microscopy (SEM)...

Steppe-pastoralist-related ancestry reached Central Europe by at least 2500 bc, whereas Iranian farmer-related ancestry was present in Aegean Europe by at least 1900 bc. However, the spread of these ancestries into the western Mediterranean, where they have contributed to many populations that live today, remains poorly understood. Here, we generat...

Over the last years, the knowledge of the children’s diet is a topic of growing interest in dental anthropology. Our aim seeks to establish patterns of interpopulation and intrapopulation variability in dietary microwear among children from four Iberian sites dated to the Neolithic through Bronze Age. Buccal and occlusal surfaces are compared to as...

Este artículo presenta un análisis holístico de los restos dentales pertenecientes a tres individuos infantiles del yacimiento de la Edad del Bronce de la Cueva de Valdavara (Becerréa, Lugo), mediante diferentes aproximaciones metodológicas, como es el microdesgaste dental, el estudio anatómico externo e interno, y el análisis de patologías. El obj...

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake.

Microremains entrapped in dental calculus are being used as a source of information to address a number of archeological questions. However, current laboratory procedures may affect the recovery of microremains and this issue has not been thoroughly investigated. This study involved the analysis of dental calculus from five Chalcolithic individuals...

The original version of this article, unfortunately, contained errors. The corresponding author failed to notice that there is a mistake in the fourth author last name. It says “Francisco Javier Aceituno Bocanera” when it should say “Francisco Javier Aceituno Bocanegra”, letter “G” is missing.

Ancient dental calculus research currently relies on destructive techniques whereby archeological specimens are broken down to determine their contents. Two strategies that could partly remediate a permanent loss of the original sample and enhance future analysis and reproducibility include (1) structural surface characterization through spectrosco...

Dental microwear is a widely used technique to infer the diet of ancient populations. This method allows to determine not only the physical properties of the food, such as abrasiveness or hardness, but also informs about how food was processed before being consumed. This technique is applied, in both buccal and occlusal dental surfaces, by means of...

A series of studies have documented how Steppe pastoralist-related ancestry reached central Europe by at least 2500 BCE, while Iranian farmer-related ancestry was present in Aegean Europe by at least 1900 BCE. However, the spread of these ancestries into the western Mediterranean where they have contributed to many populations living today remains...

We assembled genome-wide data from 271 ancient Iberians, of whom 176 are from the largely unsampled period after 2000 BCE, thereby providing a high-resolution time transect of the Iberian Peninsula.We document high genetic substructure between northwestern and southeastern hunter-gatherers before the spread of farming.We reveal sporadic contacts be...

Being at the western fringe of Europe, Iberia had a peculiar prehistory and a complex pattern of Neolithization. A few studies, all based on modern populations, reported the presence of DNA of likely African origin in this region, generally concluding it was the result of recent gene flow, probably during the Islamic period. Here, we provide eviden...

Dietary reconstruction of ancient human populations allows us to infer subsistence strategies including their cultural and technological aspects. The two most widely used techniques to analyze dietary patterns and subsistence strategies of ancient people are dental microwear and stable isotope analyses. Dental microwear has shown to be successful...

Previous studies have proposed that our ability to produce and use stone tools has been the primary selective pressure explaining the evolution of the human hand. Derived traits in the human hand include a robust thumb metacarpal, particularly at the head and the base, and a moderate trapeziometacarpal joint curvature in both radioulnar and dorsovo...

Fossil hominids often processed material held between their upper and lower teeth. Pulling with one hand and cutting with the other, they occasionally left impact cut marks on the lip (labial) surface of their incisors and canines. From these actions, it possible to determine the dominant hand used. The frequency of these oblique striations in an a...

Dietary habits of past people are fundamental to understanding their subsistence economy and their way of life. Dental microwear analysis is a useful tool which provides important information about diet and feeding behaviour in our ancestors. It allows us to identify the physical properties of food, as it provides information about the hardness and...

Knowing the total number of perikymata on the crown of a tooth is valuable when estimating enamel formation times. Studies on enamel formation times and perikymata counts have often been carried out on relatively limited geographical modern human samples. However, they have identified not only differences in the total number of perikymata between m...

Dental microwear allows us to identify the physical properties of food, as it provides information about the hardness and abrasiveness of the food and shows how it was processed before being consumed. Consequently, we can deduce the diet of the human groups analyzed. This poster focuses on the characterization of dental microwear patterns to infer...

Objectives: In the last years different methodologies have been developed to reconstruct worn teeth. In this article, we propose a new 2-D methodology to reconstruct the worn enamel of lower molars. Our main goals are to reconstruct molars with a high level of accuracy when measuring relevant histological variables and to validate the methodology...

This study aims to analyze non-masticatory dental wear patterns in fossil ”Homo” from Europe.

The dietary strategies of the first inhabitants of Europe from Gran Dolina-TD6 (Atapuerca sites, Burgos, Spain)

This study investigates handedness in a group of individuals from the Sima de los Huesos site (Atapuerca, Spain). In this research, handedness has been studied by analyzing the brain endocast asymmetries (cerebral evidence), and the results (the assignment, of the manual preference in each individual) have been compared to previous results from the...

Hominin dietary specialization is crucial to understanding the evolutionary changes of craniofacial biomechanics and the interaction of food processing methods’ effects on teeth. However, the diet-related dental wear processes of the earliest European hominins remain unknown because most of the academic attention has focused on Neandertals. Non-occ...

In the last years different methodologies have been developed to reconstruct worn teeth [1,2]. In this study we propose a new 2D methodology to reconstruct the worn enamel of lower molars in modern humans. Our main goal is to reconstruct molars with a high level of accuracy when measuring relevant histological variables and to validate the methodol...

Visuospatial integration concerns the ability to coordinate the inner and outer environments, namely the central nervous system and the outer spatial elements, through the interface of the body. This integration is essential for every basic human activity, from locomotion and grasping to speech or tooling. Visuospatial integration is even more fund...

The archaeological site of El Mirador is located in the southern slope of the Sierra de Atapuerca. The work developed at the site is providing a substantial set of data from the Upper Palaeolithic and Early Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age. Throughout at least about 4000 years of occupation, the cave was used for various activities, among which,...

Ancient DNA makes it possible to observe natural selection directly by analysing samples from populations before, during and after adaptation events. Here we report a genome-wide scan for selection using ancient DNA, capitalizing on the largest ancient DNA data set yet assembled: 230 West Eurasians who lived between 6500 and 300 bc, including 163 w...

The arrival of farming in Europe around 8,500 years ago necessitated adaptation to new environments, pathogens, diets, and social organizations. While indirect evidence of adaptation can be detected in patterns of genetic variation in present-day people, ancient DNA makes it possible to witness selection directly by analyzing samples from populatio...

Cultural dental wear provides useful information about the use of anterior teeth for non-masticatory purposes. Non-alimentary tasks are usually related to economic and cultural activities. The presence of cultural dental wear has been checked in four different Homo species from the Sierra de Atapuerca sites (Sima del Elefante, Gran Dolina-TD6, Sima...

A number of authors have studied the variability of total perikymata counts on permanent incisors in different modern human populations, finding that some populations show a significantly lower number of perikymata than others. However, little is known about the overall variability of these traits in archaeological populations of modern humans. Our...

We present a middle-aged Chalcolithic male with a supernumerary distomolar in the mandible. The prevalence of supernumerary teeth in present-day populations is low, ranging from 0.1% to 3.4%; most supernumerary teeth are documented in the anterior and molar regions of the maxilla in present populations. However, the prevalence of supernumerary mola...

This study provides a morphological characterization of the inner anatomy of the root canals of permanent first and second molars in Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age human fossils using cone-beam computed tomography. The general evolutionary trend in present-day human dentition is related to morphological simplification. As little is known about w...

El Mirador Cave (Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos, Spain): a whole perspective

Previous mitochondrial DNA analyses on ancient European remains have suggested that the current distribution of haplogroup H was modeled by the expansion of the Bell Beaker culture (ca 4,500-4,050 years BP) out of Iberia during the Chalcolithic period. However, little is known on the genetic composition of contemporaneous Iberian populations that d...

We present a Neanderthal maxilla (CF-1) from Cova Foradà site (Oliva, Valencia, Spain) with periodontal disease and evidence of attempts to alleviate pain with the use of a toothpick. Two interproximal grooves have been found on the distal surfaces of the upper left Pm(3) and M(1) of CF-1 maxilla. The location, morphology and size of the grooves co...

Considerable research supports the high frequency of right-handedness in living Homo sapiens, with worldwide rates of approximately nine right- for every one left-hander. Right-handedness appears to be a uniquely human trait, as no other primate species, no matter how proficient in tool use, shows frequencies even close to the strong right bias typ...

Human cannibalism is currently recorded in abundant archaeological assemblages of different chronologies. The TD6 level of Gran Dolina (Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos), at more than 800 ka, is the oldest case known at present. The analysis of cranial and postcranial remains of Homo antecessor has established the presence of various alterations of anth...

Human cannibalism is currently recorded in abundant archaeological assemblages of different chronologies. The TD6 level of Gran Dolina (Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos), at more than 800 ka, is the oldest case known at present. The analysis of cranial and postcranial remains of Homo antecessor has established the presence of various alterations of anth...