Dental Anthropology Research Project on Anuradhapura Vedda III

These are some of the casts that are collected from the people of Anuradhapura vedda villages. Now we have a collection of around 200 pairs of maxillary and mandibular dentiton and we are certainly planning to increase the number at least upto 300 or 400 pairs.

These casts are stored in the department of Basic Sciences, Faculty of Dental Sciences, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. We are in the process of investigating these plaster casts and collecting data. The preliminary results of this project will be presented at the 2012 Inter-Congress of International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES) on "Children and Youth in a Changing World". The congress will be held at KIIT University, Bhubaneswar, India, during 26th to 30th November 2012. The Inter-congress shall be organized jointly by IUAES Commission on Children, Youth and Childhood and Centre for Children Studies, Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS), KIIT University.

Dental Anthropology Research Project on Anuradhapura Vedda II

We have so far visited about six viilages in Medawacchi division in Anuradhapura district namely, Diviyaudabendawewa, Kukulewa, Wanni-palugollewa, Kalawelpothana, Koppetiyawa and Pandiggama. We have done the field visits four times with final visit beign 11th and 12th May 2012 to cover the above mentioned villages.

We have taken impressions of upper and lower dental arches of around 200 individuals and made plaster casts from them. These casts are stored in the department of Basic Sciences, Faculty of Dental Sciences, University of Perdeniya, Sri Lanka. We are very careful to select individuals who have the complete dention and minimal damage in their teeth with caries, attrirtion, abbrasion, etc.

In carrying out this work, we have to face many difficulties due to minimal facilities avalable in these villages. Hope this is evident by the photographs that we have published in this blog. However, we did our best to collect the impressions giving maximum care to those individuals who participated in the project.

We are palnning to continue the colection of dental cast and increase our sample size bt visiting some more villages in the future.

Dental Anthropological Research Project on Anuradhapura Vedda I

The physical anthropology reserch group of the Faculty of Dental Sciences, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka is currently conducting a research project in Anuradhapura districi, north central province of Sri Lanka. The sample population is a aboriginal vedda population in Anurdhapura district, commonly known as "Anurdhapura vedda" or "Vanni Sinhalayo".

We investigate the metric and non metric characteristics of the dentition and try to figure out the origin of these people, their pattern of migration and afinities to the other contemporary, historic and prehistoric world populations. This study will lead to the Mphil degree of Dr. J. A. Jayaweera of district hospital, Chilaw, Sri Lanka.

 
We visited the villages and took the information from the poeple like their three generation pedegree, language, religion, rituals, etc. before start collecting the impressions and casts of their dentition. They treated us very well and their hospitatlity was very impressive.