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70 FIRST PERIOD—ANTIOUITT
was already prevalent, and through the influence of Christianity became
general during the third and fourth centuries/
Notwithstanding cremation, which certainly must have destroyed a
great number of the dental appliances of that time, and in spite of the
many different destructive agents which successively did their work
on those human remains during so many centuries, not a few prosthetic

Fig. 13 Fig. 14

Tooth crowns found in an Etruscan The same tooth-crowns of the preceding
tomb of the ancient Vitulonia (Archaeological figure, seen from the side of the concavity
Museum of Florence). The enamel-cap- of the enamel capsules,
sules of these teeth (four molars and one
canine) are perfectly well preserved, whilst
the ivory has entirely disappeared.

pieces of Etruscan workmanship have come down to us; from which we
may argue that dental prosthesis was not an exceptional fact among
this people, as some may perhaps suppose, but, on the contrary, must
have been a very usual practice.
The dental appliances discovered up to now among Etruscan remains
are preserved in different Italian museums, with the exception of some
few existing in private collections or of others that have passed out of
Italy into other countries.
In the museum of Pope Julius in Rome there is a dental appliance
found at Valsiarosa in one of the many Etruscan tombs excavated in that
locality near Civita Castelhma, the ancient Falerii (Fig. 15). This

DtiufiV, o|i. cir., pp. 60, 61,