Hundreds of teeth discovered during a building demolition in Invercargill have opened a window into life in Victorian-era New Zealand.
Researchers were able to extract a wealth of information about people's diets and even their social status.
It's the last thing you'd expect to unearth.
"We found a pit essentially of teeth, full of teeth," NZ Heritage Properties principal archaeologist Megan Lawrence said.
They discovered hundreds of human teeth.
"If you can imagine, we are working with large diggers and they're pulling back strips of earth and then a whole heap of teeth sitting in the dirt," Lawrence explained.
The teeth were discovered during an archaeological investigation when buildings, dating back to the 1880s, were demolished in Invercargill. A dentist was one of the original commercial occupants.
"They were probably gathering quite a few of these extracted teeth and one of the ways to dispose of rubbish back in the 1800s was to just dig a hole and put rubbish in there," she said. "So, that's what they did."
The teeth are a rare find. Most bioarcheological studies rely on the remains of the dead, but these teeth were extracted from living people.
Researchers analysed four first permanent molars and extracted information about New Zealand's Victorian era. The patients were likely second or third-generation colonists.
"They were passing through or living in Invercargill," Professor of Biology at the University of Otago Siân Halcrow said.
"They lived on a Pakeha-type colonial diet which comprised of meat, roots, crops, barley, oats and grain and milk."
Just like today, dental work in the 19th century was expensive, and unaffordable for many.
This dentist offered cheaper work, pulling teeth out rather than restoring them.
"A lot of these teeth had massive cavities," Halcrow explained.
"These people weren't getting any preventative care, this is the last resort - they were in a lot of pain and they were mechanically just pulling out the teeth."
There was one thing we don't get offered these days, though - cocaine - free of charge.
"Cocaine is a really good anesthetic, so back in the day before we had pain relief, cocaine was advertised as a way of dulling the pain when you were having a tooth pulled," Lawrence said.
It's the first time people from a colonial Aotearoa city centre have been studied like this.
It's offering a unique insight into how things used to be.
