Archaeologists in Poland working on the excavation of the Church of St. Francis of Assisi in Krakow have found something new, described as the first discovery of its kind in the country. The body of a man has been revealed to have a medical prosthesis in his mouth, an artificial insert which allowed him to live with a cleft palate.
Anna Spinek, an anthropologist at the Hirszfeld Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy in Poland, explained the discovery to Live Science. “This is probably the first such discovery not only in Poland but also in Europe. No such devices exist in institutional and private collections (Polish and foreign).”
The prosthetic device before and after conservation, viewed from the side. The area marked “a” is gold and “b” is a residue of copper. The bulbous “c” is a woolen pad and the flat concave “e” is the plate below which replaces the hard palate, attached by the string “d” (Marcin Nowak, Magdalena Śliwka-Kaszyńska; © 2024 Elsevier Ltd / Live Science)
The device, described as a palatal obturator, was designed to fit into the roof of the man’s mouth. It would fit into the nasal cavity of the man replacing his hard palate.
A Finely Crafted Device
A cleft palate occurs during gestation when the roof of the mouth, specifically the hard palate, doesn’t completely close. As a result the nasal cavity is directly linked to the mouth and foreign substances can enter this cavity. A cleft palate typically causes problems associated with breathing,…
