Wearing your teeth on your sleeve?

One thing I have noticed in the last few years of my self-imposed tooth obsession, is how often teeth get used for art and decoration. On this occasion, it is the glitter encrusted pop princess Ke$ha, famous for brushing her gold plated gnashers with Jack Daniels, who is re-appropriating teeth.

Last year the 25 year old singer put out a Twitter based request for each of her three million fans to send her some of their unwanted teeth and even provided a PO Box for them to do so. As is the way of crazed fans, she received thousands of teeth in the mail.

And the reason? Frivolous accessories, of course! Ke$ha made the donated teeth into a bra-top, a headdress, necklaces and earrings. According to this interview with MTV she's even worn the outfit out, proving that not only are teeth essential to human health and wellbeing, but they're fashionable too.

Ke$ha's dentists get angry when she continues to ignore their advice to
stop using alcohol to brush her teeth and to start using a fluoride toothpaste.

Fashion, with teeth...

Archaeologists working near Leipzig in Germany have uncovered what appears to be the earliest example of a purse - and not just any purse, this may have been the Chanel handbag of the Bronze Age world.

Over a hundred dog teeth were found in a grave dating between 2500 and 2200 BC. The teeth were arranged closely together, in a series of  neat rows. Archaeologist Susanne Friederich believes that these canine teeth were the decoration for a purse made of leather or fabric which has disintegrated over time.

Dog teeth, lots of them.  Item is about 25cm across.
(Photo courtesy of Klaus Bentele, LDA Halle, via National Geographic)

Friederich who works for the Sachsen-Anhalt State Archaeology and Preservation Office has said that 'all that's left is the teeth. They're all pointing in the same direction, so it looks a lot like a modern handbag flap'.

Dog and wolf teeth are common finds in the prehistoric world, often found as pendants on necklaces or as hair decorations. It is likely that such ornamentation was rather fashionable for a time. However, to find so many teeth in one place and in such as ostentatious design is unusual. The bag would have required the teeth of dozens of dogs to make and in fact the sheer quantity of such teeth found in burial contexts in northern and central Europe in this period might suggest that dogs were kept more as 'livestock' than pets.

So, I suppose this discovery really is a case of handbags at dawn... at the dawn of time, that is!*




*Sorry. The puns are getting worse.


References:
National Geographic,  'World's Oldest Purse Found' 
Mz-web.de,  Staunen pur