Necklace of the Dead: Archaeologists Discover a Neolithic Pendant, and It Was Made From a Human Tooth

When my brother was younger, all he wanted was a shark tooth pendant. When I was younger, I wanted a wolf pendant. Now, while you can get a shark tooth pendant at quite a few beach souvenir shops, my wolf pendant proved elusive. So I made do with the next best thing. When my Great Dane-Boerboel mix lost her canine milk teeth, I fashioned one into a necklace.

Why did we want these tooth necklaces? Well, for one, most kids had them, and it was a sort of statement, and two, we thought they looked cool.

Humans have fashioned all sorts of animal teeth into pendants; that’s not a new phenomenon. In fact, it can be seen throughout the Upper Paleolithic through the Neolithic, from shark teeth to deer canines. But what about human teeth?

Researchers Nemanja Marković and Ana Maričić have recently published a study documenting a rare instance of a human tooth used as jewelry in Neolithic Europe. One of only a handful of examples, it helps shape our understanding of how people in the Late Neolithic Balkans treated the dead and used human remains as symbolic objects.

Human Tooth and the Site of Jablanica

Every once in a while, prehistoric Europeans would modify human teeth to use as jewelry. Examples of such teeth have been found in Abri Pataud in Dordogne, France, during the Gravettian and at Dispilio in Kastoria, Greece, during the Neolithic.

These teeth are generally thought to be tied to identity, ritual, or simply personal adornment, but their exact meaning is uncertain.

In the central Balkans, the late Neolithic was defined by the Vinča culture (5300/5200–4600/4500 BCE), named after the site of the same name; it was one of the largest prehistoric settlements in Europe. Among its repertoire were tools and weapons made of stone, bone, and horn, as well as jewelry made of shells. They made pots and vases and are known for their unique stylized human-like statues.

One of the Vinča culture’s sites was Jablanica, located near Mladenovac about 50 km south of Belgrade.

It was first discovered in 1899, and excavations began the following year, with findings published soon after, making it one of the earliest examples of systematic archaeological research in Serbia. These initial excavations uncovered a settlement that spread across the plateau of the western bank of the Jablanica stream. A related site, named Jablanica 2, was identified nearly 120 years later in 2018. Based on radiocarbon dating, the site was occupied between roughly 4800 and 4650 BCE.

And where does the human tooth come in? Well, it was first logged into the Museum of Mladenovac’s collection in 2006 as a bead made from an animal tooth. It had been discovered during field surveys, meaning when archaeologists were walking around the site looking at the surface for any notable finds. It lay in a field with agricultural activity, which had damaged it and split the crown in two. Then it lay there for a while, until someone chose to take a closer look.

Looking More Closely

While looking through the cataloged items, Marković came across the supposed bead. Looking more closely, he noticed it wasn’t a bead at all, but a human tooth, one with a perfect hole drilled through the root.

More precisely, it was a human canine, roughly 23 mm long. It had some cracking, and a piece of the crown was missing, but that seemed to be due to post-burial damage.

Based on the tooth root it had likely been extracted from someone long dead, since extracting it while the person was alive would typically leave visible damage.

To try to determine the age at death, how the tooth was made, and possibly how old it was, the researchers combined visual inspection with microscopic and X-ray analyses.

The tooth belonged to an adult; the exact age cannot be determined, but based on the wear, they were probably middle-aged. The hole was drilled from both sides, and the inside revealed it had hung for a considerable time on a cord or fiber, leaving behind various wear patterns and scratches.

Now, because the find was a surface find, the researchers couldn’t estimate its age based on stratigraphy (the layer in which it was found, as there was none).

Surface finds are always tricky, as they have lost their contexts, which can make dating them difficult; some objects can nonetheless be relatively easily dated, such as coins for which we know when they were minted and circulated. But what about a tooth?

Radiocarbon may come to mind, but that is destructive and needs permits to conduct. Luckily, this tooth had a drill hole, one that the researchers could compare with a similarly drilled, dated Spondylus (a type of marine shell) bracelet dated to 4726 and 4710 BCE.

The comparison suggested that a similar drill technique was used, and thus the tooth was possibly made around the same time as the shell bracelet. Every excavation at Jablanica so far has turned up only Late Neolithic material, nothing earlier or later, which narrows the window further.

According to Marković, the skill required to make the tooth was considerable; this was no improvised piece. Someone didn’t decide to make it simply because they came across a cool tooth.

Also, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried, but drilling into a tooth is incredibly difficult. Your enamel is the hardest substance in the human body, your root is softer than enamel, but it’s still no easy drill. I’ve drilled into bovid teeth using a diamond-tipped Dremel, and even then you could feel the resistance (it was also very fun explaining to the hardware store employee that I needed a diamond-tipped Dremel bit; the look of horror when I innocently proclaimed I needed to cut through bone and teeth was priceless!).

Human Tooth Necklace

Together, the findings suggest this tooth was deliberately taken from a deceased person and shaped into a necklace by someone probably during the Late Neolithic. Although the tooth could technically have been worn as a bracelet, the wear patterns are more consistent with a pendant hanging around the neck than with one worn snugly against the wrist.

The tooth offers a rare glimpse into how people of the Late Neolithic Vinča culture deliberately altered human remains, fitting into a wider pattern seen across Neolithic Europe and the Near East where similar tooth jewelry could signal identity, ritual meaning, or social belonging.

As for why a canine was chosen? The most probable answer, according to Marković, is simply that canines are visually distinctive, making them particularly well-suited as symbolic objects. Although sometimes other teeth were used. Personally, I have to agree; canines look cooler.

Rather than being a standard or common craft item, the Jablanica tooth pendant appears to reflect a more selective, individual practice. This holds especially true when one considers how little personal jewelry has been found at the site overall: a shell bracelet fragment and an unpublished shell pendant. In this context, the tooth pendant is even more striking and rare.

It’s also the only reliably documented human tooth ornament in the Neolithic central Balkans; no other human tooth ornaments have been reliably documented elsewhere in the region, although animal teeth have occasionally been fashioned into jewelry.

A single drilled canine, mistaken for a bead for over a decade, turned out to be a rare Neolithic European human tooth ornament. Taken from someone likely long dead, then drilled by skilled hands and worn as a pendant. It’s small, but it’s unique and offers a rare glimpse into the world of Neolithic Europe and how the living and the dead stayed connected long after death.

Come to think of it, I couldn’t recall ever hearing about a human tooth pendant in South Africa, and a quick Google Scholar search revealed no results. Though other animals sometimes had their teeth used as ornaments, I have personally found a quite impressive warthog tusk fashioned into a pendant, with use-wear indicating it regularly came into contact with skin.

Why do you think human tooth ornaments are so rare in Europe, and what was the meaning behind them- ritual? Or did they simply look cool?

Let me know what you think, and if you'd like to support this blog and the person writing it, you can chip in once, monthly, or yearly. Only if you'd like to.

References

Marković, N., and A. Maričić. 2026. “ Modified Human Tooth Pendant From the Late Neolithic (5300/5200–4600/4500 cal bc) Site of Jablanica, Serbia.” International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 36, no. 4: 1079–1086. https://doi.org/10.1002/oa.70151.

Slobodan Perušinović. (2024, November 17). Vinča. Туристичка организација Србије. https://www.serbia.travel/en/vinca/