Mark S. Copley

Direct chemical evidence for widespread dairying in prehistoric Britain

Domesticated animals formed an important element of farming practices in prehistoric Britain, a fact revealed through the quantity and variety of animal bone typically found at archaeological sites. However, it is not known whether the ruminant animals were raised purely for their tissues (e.g., meat) or alternatively were exploited principally for their milk. Absorbed organic residues from pottery from 14 British prehistoric sites were investigated for evidence of the processing of dairy products. Our ability to detect dairy fats rests on the observation that the δ13C values of the C18:0 fatty acids in ruminant dairy fats are ≈2.3‰ lower than in ruminant adipose fats. This difference can be ascribed to (i) the inability of the mammary gland to biosynthesize C18:0; (ii) the biohydrogenation of dietary unsaturated fatty acids in the rumen; and (iii) differences (i.e., 8.1‰) in the δ13C values of the plant dietary fatty acids and carbohydrates. The lipids from a total of 958 archaeological pottery vessels were extracted, and the compound-specific δ13C values of preserved fatty acids (C16:0 and C18:0) were determined via gas chromatography-combustion-isotope ratio mass spectrometry. The results provide direct evidence for the exploitation of domesticated ruminant animals for dairy products at all Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age settlements in Britain. Most significantly, studies of pottery from a range of key early Neolithic sites confirmed that dairying was a widespread activity in this period and therefore probably well developed when farming was introduced into Britain in the fifth millennium B.C.

Detection of palm fruit lipids in archaeological pottery from Qasr Ibrim, Egyptian Nubia.

In modern times, the trees of the palm family have been of great economic and social importance to the people in Egypt, as in other parts of the world. There are various species of palm and although different parts of the tree can be used, the fruit are of great value. In antiquity, it is expected that the palm fruit would also have been of great importance to people in the region. The chemical analysis of absorbed residues in archaeological pottery is well established, and through the investigation of ceramic vessels (via gas chromatography, gas chromatography–mass spectrometry and gas chromatography–combustion–isotope ratio mass spectrometry) saturated carboxylic acids in the range C12 to C18 have been detected (with an unusually high abundance of C12) from vessels from the Nubian site of Qasr Ibrim. This is mirrored in the saturated fatty acid distributions detected from the kernels of modern and ancient date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) and dom palm (Hyphaena thebaicas (L.) Mart.). Mixing in some of the vessels of the palm fruit with another lipid source is indicated through the δ13C values. These results provide the first direct evidence for the exploitation of palm fruit in antiquity and the use of pottery vessels in its processing.

Compound-specific stable carbon isotopic detection of pig product processing in British Late Neolithic pottery

By extracting lipids from potsherds and determining the d13C of the most abundant fatty acids, degraded fats from ruminant animals, such as cattle, and non-ruminant animals, such as pigs, can be distinguished. The authors use this phenomenon to investigate Late Neolithic pig exploitation and find that the pig �signature� was more frequently found among residues from Grooved Ware than other prehistoric pottery types.

Processing palm fruits in the Nile Valley — biomolecular evidence from Qasr Ibrim

While palaeobotanical remains provide clear evidence for the exploitation of the date at various locations in Egypt and Nubia, it is the detection amongst lipid residues in closed form vessels of fatty acid distributions dominated by diagnostic short-chain fatty acids, i.e. C12:0 and C14:0′ that provides the first direct evidence for the processing of palm fruit in pottery vessels.