Dental nonmetrics: an asset to anthropology

Dental nonmetric traits are a valuable tool for understanding relationships between populations. They can be observed on the entire dentition. These traits are anatomical variations observed on permanent and deciduous dentition. One of the advantages of these traits is the possibility of observing them on living individuals. The analysis of dental nonmetric traits may be one of the more interesting approaches when applied to studies of past populations. Several studies concerning peopling dynamics during the third millennium BC, and mainly the Bell Beaker period are presented here to assess dental nonmetric potential for understanding relationships between populations. The first one concerns a study on mobility evidence during the Bell Beaker period in Western Switzerland: a dental nonmetric study, completed by a strontium isotopic study. The second example concerns a study on mobility evidence in the Alps, through the study of the Bell Beaker megalithic necropolis of Saint-Martin-de-Corléans (Aosta, Italy). Finally, the dental nonmetric study of the collective grave of Spreitenbach (Aargau, Switzerland) belonging to the end of the Neolithic is presented to precise its chronological attribution and populational affinities