274 • Gabor Kocsis and Antonia Marcsik 



HA 



lb. 



Figure 3. X-rays of palatal invagina- 

 tion (Hallett's type III) in maxillary lat- 

 eral incisors. Szegvar-Oromdiilo, Grave 

 83, 7th century. 



FiCiURE 4. Palato-gingival groove in 

 maxillary right lateral incisor. Szegvar- 

 Oromdulo, Grave 128, 7th century. 



Figure 5. X-rays of palato-gingival 

 groove in maxillary right lateral in- 

 cisor. Szegvar-Oromdulo. Grave 128, 

 7th century. 



The palato-gingival (Figures 4,5) groove begins in the 

 central fossa area, principally in the crown of upper incisors, 

 crosses over the cingulum, and continues apically down the 

 root for varying lengths ( Simon et al . 1971:823). This groove 

 occurs mostly in the upper lateral incisors, rarely in the upper 

 central incisors (Withers et al. 1981:42). The phenomenon 

 has been termed in the literature as radicular anomaly, disto- 

 lingual groove, and radicular lingual groove (Withers et al. 

 1981:41). 



It is important from the point of view of differential diag- 

 nosis that the palato-gingival groove should be differentiated 

 from the vertical fracture and crack of the root (August 

 1978:1038). 



The direct cause of the groove is unknown. Mechanical 

 effects on the tooth germ are considered as probable causes, 

 which can also induce dental invagination (Lee et al. 

 1968:18; Everett and Kramer 1972:357). On the basis of the 

 investigations of Bruszt ( 1950:536-537) it is also possible 

 that the cause of the malformation is fusion of teeth, as in the 

 case of dens invaginatus. 



Material and methods 



We studied the prevalence of the two developmental anoma- 

 lies on x-rays of 500 upper lateral incisors of unknown per- 

 sons and on 803 upper incisors of 229 persons at the Depart- 

 ment of Dentistry and Oral Surgery (Albert Szent-Gycirgyi 

 University Medical School). We also investigated 796 upper 

 incisors of 282 skulls from the seventh-eighth centuries a.d. 



and 84 upper incisors of 36 skulls from the Neolithic age 

 from the paleoanthropological collection of the Department 

 of Anthropology, Attila Jozsef University, Szeged. The 

 period of the seventh-eighth centuries is the so-called "Avar 

 Period." One of the components of the Avar tribes, which 

 originated from the Altaic region, is of Mongoloid character, 

 but in the population of the Avar Period of course, the Eu- 

 ropoid types predominate (85.5%; Liptak 1983:48-49,85- 

 89). On the skulls from the seventh-eighth centuries we 

 could examine the association of the two developmental 

 anomalies with the Europoid and Mongoloid traits. 



The classical, anthropological elaboration of the larger 

 part of the studied paleoanthropological series has already 

 been reported in the literature (Liptak and Marcsik 1966; 

 Liptak and Vamos 1969; Kohegyi and Marcsik 1971 ; Vamos 

 1973; Liptak and Varga 1974; Farkas 1975; Liptak and Mar- 

 csik 1976). 



The study of the two developmental anomalies was per- 

 formed by direct observation and evaluation of x-rays. The 

 results were analyzed using two-dimensional contingency 

 tables. 



Results and discussion 



FREQUENCY 



In our recent material , on the basis of the x-rays of 500 upper 

 lateral incisors, we found the invagination in dilated form 

 (Hallett's type III) in 12 cases, which translates to a frequen- 

 cy of 2.4% (Table I). The incidence of dens invaginatus was 



Zagreb Paleopathology Symp. 1988 



