A unique find of juvenile cleft lip and palate in the post-mediaeval impious burial of two males in Dunajská Streda, Slovakia

• Published in: Archaeological and anthropological sciences 2022-04, Vol.14 (4), Article 68
• Main Authors: Bodoriková, Silvia, Dörnhöferová, Michaela, Švábová, Petra, Barta, Peter, Baldovič, Marian, Palkovičová, Jana, Beňuš, Radoslav, Takács, Michal, Bánsky, Roman, Čaplová, Zuzana, Obertová, Zuzana, Pripková, Katarína Horváthová
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 17th century; 18th century; Anthropology; Archaeology; Burials; Chemistry/Food Science; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; Geography; Life Sciences; Males; Meat; Noncitizens; Original Paper; Orofacial clefts; Social status; Squatters; Teeth; Violent death
• ISSN: 1866-9557; 1866-9565
• DOI: 10.1007/s12520-022-01546-x

Orofacial clefts are a common developmental anomaly in living individuals; however, skulls with clefts are relatively rarely found in archaeological specimens. The presented research is dealing with the first and only historical skeletal case of cleft lip and palate from the territory of Slovakia. The skeletal remains belonged to a juvenile male impiously buried in a storage pit together with an adult male. The position of the skeletons strongly suggests that the deposition of the two bodies was a single event, dated to the mid-seventeenth century or in the late eighteenth century calAD. A juvenile male found in a squatting position at the bottom of the pit was affected by an incomplete unilateral cleft palate combined with a right-sided cleft lip. The defect was associated with dental anomalies and defects such as supernumerary teeth and enamel hypoplasia, as well as dysmorphology of the facial complex. Both the affected juvenile male and the adult male consumed meat, indicating their stable, if not higher, social status. That, coupled with the fact that the individual with cleft lived to the age of 16–18 years, suggests that at least this younger male must have been well cared for and lived in an economically and socially stable environment. The buried males were not biologically related and were probably of Western European origin. All these facts indicate that they were travelling foreigners from the higher class who died unexpectedly with a possibility of a violent death.