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Reconstructing the Meals That People Consumed in the Past From Chemical Residues on Ancient Cooking Pots - SciTechDaily

Reconstructing the Meals That People Consumed in the Past From Chemical Residues on Ancient Cooking Pots - SciTechDaily

Reconstructing the Meals That People Consumed in the Past From Chemical Residues on Ancient Cooking Pots - SciTechDaily
Sep 14, 2020 2 mins, 5 secs

Seven La Chamba unglazed ceramic pots used in a yearlong cooking experiment that analyzed the chemical residues of meals prepared.

Archaeologists find that unglazed ceramic cookware absorbs the chemical residue of present and past meals.

If you happen to dig up an ancient ceramic cooking pot, don’t clean it.

“Our data can help us better reconstruct the meals and specific ingredients that people consumed in the past which, in turn, can shed light on social, political and environmental relationships within ancient communities,” said study co-lead author Melanie Miller, a researcher at Berkeley’s Archaeological Research Facility and a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Otago in New Zealand.

In a yearlong cooking experiment led by Miller and Berkeley archaeologist Christine Hastorf, seven chefs each prepared 50 meals made from combinations of venison, maize (corn) and wheat flour in newly purchased La Chamba ceramic pots.

By analyzing the chemical residues of the meals cooked in each pot, the researchers sought to learn whether the deposits found in ancient cooking vessels would reflect the remains of only the last dish cooked, or previous meals, as well.

“We chose the food based on how easy it would be to distinguish the chemicals in the food from one another and how the pots would react to the isotopic and chemical values of the food,” said Hastorf, a Berkeley professor of anthropology who studies food archaeology, among other things.

“The mushy meals were bland, and we didn’t eat them,” Miller noted.

Every eighth meal was charred to replicate the kinds of carbonized residues that archaeologists often encounter in ancient pots and to mimic what would normally happen in a pot’s lifetime.

Overall, chemical analyses of the food residues showed that different meal time scales were represented in different residues.

For example, the charred bits at the bottom of a pot contained evidence of the latest meal cooked, while the remnants of prior meals could be found in the patina that built up elsewhere on the pot’s interior and in the lipid residue that was absorbed into the pottery itself.

“We’ve flung open the door for others to take this experiment to the next level and record even longer timelines in which food residues can be identified,” Miller said.

Reference: “Interpreting ancient food practices: stable isotope and molecular analyses of visible and absorbed residues from a year-long cooking experiment” by Melanie J.

September 11, 2020

September 11, 2020

September 11, 2020

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