Dental microwear and controlled food testing on sheep: The TRIDENT project

Our first results concern the effects of different food types, first free of dust and then with dust, thus reproducing natural conditions. After exploring the effects of seeds of different size and hardness, we have also further investigated the unexpected results highlighted over the course of the experimentation. Among them is the relevance of the practice to enlarge sample size by including different facets of the teeth and how this practice affects our results and interpretation on diet reconstruction. Finally we show some preliminary results of an alternative analytic approach to better discriminate between different dental microwear textures.