Title: Dental Anthropology: The teeth and their secrets

Speaker: Judyta Olszewski (Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Date: Friday 14 November, 2025

Time: 1:00-2:30pm

Mode: In-person

Venue: Room 114, Humanities Building, New Asia College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Abstract:

What is the one bone that directly interacts with your environment throughout your life? The teeth! Your teeth contain snapshots of your behaviours such as oral hygiene habits, dietary choices and even parafunctional behaviours. Dental anthropology is the  subfield that concerns itself with studying  these  individual attributes and I do my part by using macroscopic and biochemical techniques. Against a lens of the  historic  relationship  between The Netherlands and South Africa, I will present the capabilities (and limitations) of using the teeth to infer on human pasts.

Bio:

Dr. Judyta Olszewski (goes by Jude) is a biological anthropologist/archaeologist who has conducted research and taught students on four continents. She tends to focus on the teeth  but  she  has  experience  working with the rest of the human body as well as ceramics and lithics from archaeological  sites.  She received her PhD from the University of Cape Town in South Africa, her Masters from Leiden  University in  The  Netherlands and her Honours Bachelor from Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada. She is a firm believer in integrating herself in the cultures of which she researches to reconstruct past behaviours against the relevant landscape, hence her global movements. She currently teaches at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.