Like many LA celebrities today, serious dental work was carried out in 17th century France to protect the smiles of perceived social elites. This statement is based on new research into the well-preserved body, and mouth, of Anne d’Alegre, who was discovered in a lead coffin during a 1988 excavation at the Chateau de Laval, in northwestern France.
When this noble French woman was first exhumed, archaeologists noted a curious dental prosthetic, but no tools were available to research any further. But now, with more advanced scanning tools, a team of scientists has found that Anne d’Alegre used a contraption made of golden wire “to secure her teeth in place.”
The skeleton of Anne d’Alegre on display at the Chapel of the Old Castle of Laval in Mayenne, France. (Fab5669 / CC BY-SA 4.0 )
A Stressful Life Story Revealed by Anne d’Alegre’s Teeth
Anne was a Huguenot protestant who in the 1500s had raised many swords against Catholics during the French Wars of Religion. By the age of 21, she was a widow with a young son, Guy XX de Laval, and during the Eighth War of Religion d’Alegre, she and her son hid from Catholic forces when their property was seized by the Crown of France .
Some 400 years after the French aristocrat’s death, and 35 years after the body of Anne d’Alegre was recovered by a team of archaeologists, a group of forensic dentists published a new study in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports . Looking at her childhood and upbringing it is of little wonder the authors…
