The Sheep Project (3): A Review of Age‐at‐Death Estimation From Mandible Stage Schemes in the Light of a High Resolution Known‐Age Shetland Sheep Dataset

The largest published dataset of sheep ( Ovis aries ) cheek tooth wear recorded from known‐age skeletonized mandibles is presented, with raw data disseminated as a supplement. The dataset has previously been used to investigate the influence of sex, nutrition, and breeding status on dental maturation (eruption and wear of individual teeth). Here, complemented by published tooth wear datasets from the same breed, it is employed to supplement implementation of categorical mandible stage aging systems embedded in zooarchaeological research. We age‐benchmark mandible stages, highlight where those within each system are comparable, and consider the implications of our data for zooarchaeological interpretation. Here we also publish a complete set of Jones' sheep mandible stages as a supplement, which includes previously unpublished stages and their frequency in her multi‐breed observations from live sheep.