Dental health and diet in early medieval Ireland

The results of the present study confirm the data gained by written sources and stable isotopes analyses suggesting the diet of the early Irish was rich in carbohydrates with only occasional use of meat. Furthermore, significant differences between the sexes in terms of recorded pathologies strongly suggest different nutritional patterns with females consuming foods mostly based on carbohydrates in comparison to males. The observed sex-differences might also occur due to differences between male and female sex such as reproductive biology and pregnancy, a somewhat different age distributions, but also as a result of different cultural practices between the sexes.