Abstract: The purposes of this paper are to study the characteristics of deciduous teeth o f bronze age Chinese and to explore the inter-population affinities in China and East Asia during this time period. The materials used in this paper include 296 deciduous teeth( see table 1) , which w ere excavated from an archaeological site in Chang yang county o f Hubei Province in central China. In this bronze age ( 4000 yea rs BP) site, a bout 30 adult and 80 children skeletons were found. Mo st of them are in fragmentary condition. Among the 296 deciduous teeth, only small part of them are attached with maxillary and mandibular bones. According to the methods of Hanihara and Wolpoff, both morphological observation and measurements w ere performed by the senior author. The results are as follow:
Among the 12 morphological traits observed, the frequencies and expression patterns o f double shovel, interruption groove and tuberculum dentale are less obvious than those in permanent teeth. The characteristics in shovel incisors, Carabelli 's cusp, cusp number o f UM1 and LM 2, and distal trigonid crest are similar to those of permanent teeth ( see tables 2, 3, 4, and 5) . Four traits( cusp 6 of LM 1, cusp 7 o f LM 1 and deflecting wrinkle and protostylid) a re much more common and marked expressed in deciduous teeth than in permanent teeth ( see tables 5, 6 and 7). The authors believe that most o f the dental morphological traits in permanent teeth, which are thought to have identification value for racial or population groups, have equal expressions in deciduous teeth. Some o f them even have higher frequencies or mo re obvious expressions than in permanent teeth. Generally speaking , the dentition of deciduous teeth used in present study is similar to that o f other N E Asia n populations with Sinodont characteristics in morphology ( see table 10 ). How ever, a few dental traits show southern Mongoloid patterns. The reasons w ere also discussed in this paper.

Key words: Deciduous teeth, Dental characteristics, Bronze age, Changyang , Hubei Province