In this paper, the tooth wear of ancient inhabitants in the second phase of Zaghunluq Cemetery in Xinjiang Autonomous Region was observed and studied. The purpose of this study was to reveal the special tooth wear pattern and possible ways of teeth use in the Zaghunluq ancient population. The sample analyzed in this study consisted of the skeletal remains of 208 adult individuals with a total of 1849 permanent teeth.

Through observing these tooth wear in this study, we found that all 208 individuals were affected by attrition with various degrees of dental wear, with a relatively obvious phenomenon of heavier wear of the anterior teeth than the posterior teeth in some specimens. To further reveal the wear differences between the anterior and posterior teeth in each sample, we calculated the indices of teeth wear relative to M1 of each individual and divided the calculation results into 2 sets by age (the youth, the middle-aged, the aged) and sex (the male, the female) to compare the distribution difference of the indices among different age and sex groups in Zaghunluq ancient population. At the same time, several ancient populations from different archaeological sites (Roonka, Yingpan, Nileke, Yanghai, Shuiquan, Xiawanggang, Youyao) were selected for tooth wear comparative analysis of the indices. The results indicated that the degree of tooth wear of the Zaghunluq ancient population increased significantly with the increase of age, and there was a great difference in anterior and posterior tooth wear among different age groups. The anterior tooth wear of Zaghunluq middle-aged individuals was more severe than those of Zaghunluq young and aged individuals. However, the difference between the sex groups was not significant. In addition, by comparing with other different ancient populations, we further confirmed that the anterior teeth were much more worn than the posterior ones among Zaghunluq population, which mainly occurred on middle-aged mandibular individuals.

Given the close relationship of the wear differences between the anterior and posterior teeth with some special use of teeth, the anterior teeth wear observed on middle-aged mandibular individuals was not only affected by age and tooth eruption, but also related to the use of teeth as the non-masticatory tools of individuals. The teeth were used as tools to engage in their some daily labor activities. Consequently, it can be inferred that the anterior teeth wear is more severe than posterior teeth wear among middle-aged mandibular individuals in Zaghunluq ancient population, which may be influenced by three major factors, namely the instrumental use of tooth, tooth eruption sequence and age.