LE CHENE, FRANCE—A timber burial chamber dating to the third century B.C. has yielded the remains of a woman who had an iron pin in place of an upper incisor tooth. “The skeleton was very badly preserved. But the teeth were in an anatomical position, with the molars, pre-molars, canines and incisors. Then there was this piece of metal. My first reaction was: what is this?” archaeologist Guillaume Seguin said to BBC News. The piece of metal has the same dimensions and shape as the woman’s 31 teeth, and may have been intended as a false tooth. Iron, however, would have corroded inside the body, and the implant may have caused a deadly infection. Seguin and researchers from the University of Bordeaux note in the journal Antiquity that the Celtic Gauls had contact with the Etruscans, who were known for crafting partial dentures, in the third century B.C.
