RESOLVING THE FISHER-FARMER CONUNDRUM IN PREHISTORIC EUROPE USING BIOMOLECULAR APPROACHES (AquaNeo)
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Bristol
Department Name: Chemistry
Abstract
For most of the modern human evolution, humans were depending on food resources they hunted, gathered and fished. The transition to the Neolithic saw a major change in subsistence, with the introduction of domesticated plants and animals in human diet. Many coastal populations of early farmers turned their back from the sea and were not consuming marine foodstuffs. Little is known about early farmers from inland locations and their use of aquatic resources from rivers and lakes. Together with milk, aquatic resources are the only foodstuff available to farmers that are a source of vitamin D3, crucial for bone health in most of Europe where exposition to UVB are insufficient. Aquatic foods may thus have played a key nutritional role in farmers' diet, particularly in regions where milk was not greatly exploited. However, fishing and trapping skills are very much part of the hunter-gatherer life-ways. Aquatic resource use in farming communities is thus likely to show that these skills were transmitted from residual hunter-gatherer populations to early farmers (cultural hypothesis). Beyond the mere ease-of-access to productive rivers and streams, the use of aquatic resources by early farmers is hypothesised to have been shaped by nutritional necessity and access to cultural skills.
Aquatic skeletal remains are very small and fragile, and traditional methods for the detection of consumption of freshwater resources using human bone collagen is extremely challenging. We are targeting pottery sherds to detect the use of freshwater resources at early (inland) farming sites. Indeed lipids (or fats) trapped in pottery pores provide evidence for what was cooked in ceramic vessels. By characterising lipids using state-of-the-art analytical methods, we will be able to detect well-known compounds (or biomarkers) characteristic of aquatic resource processing. We will develop a novel method using a highly sensitive instrument to detect extremely low amounts of such biomarkers in the lipid assemblage of pottery extracts. We will also use the aquatic biomarkers and the carbon isotope signature of ubiquitous compounds found in animal fats (C16:0 and C18:0 fatty acids) to build a mixing model to quantify the amount of freshwater-derived animal fats in each pottery vessel.
There is very much uncertainty into whether proteins from foodstuffs would survive on archaeological pottery sherds - if so, they would provide very complementary insights to lipids as they are species-specific (while lipids are not). We will test the stability of foodstuff proteins by cooking diverse foodstuffs (including different types of fish) in replica pottery. We will then sample parts of the vessels and bury them in compost under two different conditions for 18 months to mimic archaeological degradation. We will then analyse the sherds using palaeo-proteomics methods to assess whether foodstuff proteins have survived and how well.
We have >1,500 archaeological lipid extracts and sherds curated in Bristol that were obtained from our European-funded NeoMilk project. We will select extracts and sherds from various farming sites across mainland Europe to investigate aquatic lipid biomarkers and proteins. That will enable us to assess the level and type of freshwater resource use at those sites. This novel data will be extremely valuable to detect sherds that were not used for cooking freshwater resources - they will be used to demonstrate that lipids preserved within can be 14C-dated and be used to build robust chronologies as they are not affected by an "old-carbon" effect.
Finally, we will use models to study the link between the use of freshwater resources by early farmers and ecological (accessibility to water bodies), nutritional (milk use, exploitation of hunted game) and cultural (contact with hunter-gatherer populations) parameters. This project will highlight the importance of freshwater ecosystems to human populations in the past, present and future.
Aquatic skeletal remains are very small and fragile, and traditional methods for the detection of consumption of freshwater resources using human bone collagen is extremely challenging. We are targeting pottery sherds to detect the use of freshwater resources at early (inland) farming sites. Indeed lipids (or fats) trapped in pottery pores provide evidence for what was cooked in ceramic vessels. By characterising lipids using state-of-the-art analytical methods, we will be able to detect well-known compounds (or biomarkers) characteristic of aquatic resource processing. We will develop a novel method using a highly sensitive instrument to detect extremely low amounts of such biomarkers in the lipid assemblage of pottery extracts. We will also use the aquatic biomarkers and the carbon isotope signature of ubiquitous compounds found in animal fats (C16:0 and C18:0 fatty acids) to build a mixing model to quantify the amount of freshwater-derived animal fats in each pottery vessel.
There is very much uncertainty into whether proteins from foodstuffs would survive on archaeological pottery sherds - if so, they would provide very complementary insights to lipids as they are species-specific (while lipids are not). We will test the stability of foodstuff proteins by cooking diverse foodstuffs (including different types of fish) in replica pottery. We will then sample parts of the vessels and bury them in compost under two different conditions for 18 months to mimic archaeological degradation. We will then analyse the sherds using palaeo-proteomics methods to assess whether foodstuff proteins have survived and how well.
We have >1,500 archaeological lipid extracts and sherds curated in Bristol that were obtained from our European-funded NeoMilk project. We will select extracts and sherds from various farming sites across mainland Europe to investigate aquatic lipid biomarkers and proteins. That will enable us to assess the level and type of freshwater resource use at those sites. This novel data will be extremely valuable to detect sherds that were not used for cooking freshwater resources - they will be used to demonstrate that lipids preserved within can be 14C-dated and be used to build robust chronologies as they are not affected by an "old-carbon" effect.
Finally, we will use models to study the link between the use of freshwater resources by early farmers and ecological (accessibility to water bodies), nutritional (milk use, exploitation of hunted game) and cultural (contact with hunter-gatherer populations) parameters. This project will highlight the importance of freshwater ecosystems to human populations in the past, present and future.
Organisations
- University of Bristol (Lead Research Organisation)
- Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (Collaboration)
- Landesamt für Archäologie Sachsen (Collaboration)
- Deutsches Archäologisches Institut (Collaboration)
- Kiel University (Collaboration)
- University of Manchester (Project Partner)
- UNIVERSITY OF EXETER (Project Partner)
- University College London (Project Partner)
- University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Project Partner)
People |
ORCID iD |
Mélanie Roffet-Salque (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Davis I
(2024)
A photographic atlas for European freshwater and migratory fish remains and key considerations for their analysis
in International Journal of Osteoarchaeology
Title | New photographic guide for the identification of European freshwater fish |
Description | We developed a photographic guide for the bones commonly used in taxonomic identification, covering 32 species of freshwater and migratory fish present in central Europe. The guide aims to act as an accessible and user-friendly resource to assist the identification process. |
Type Of Material | Biological samples |
Year Produced | 2023 |
Provided To Others? | No |
Impact | Manuscript submitted to the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. While a photographic guide atlas cannot replace the nuances of a physical reference collection or fully illustrate morphological variability within species, it provides an accessible and practical resource for species identification in archaeological context. . |
Title | Novel high-resolution mass spectrometric method for the identification of aquatic biomarkers in archaeological pottery sherds |
Description | We exploit the full-spectrum, high-resolution and accurate mass features of the GC-qTOFMS (Agilent Technologies) enabling the simultaneous, highly selective and highly sensitive detection of suites of compounds in complex mixtures using a non-targeted approach. We use the deep coverage of GC-qTOFMS for the detection of aquatic biomarkers in archaeological lipid extracts, which has never been been done before. In contrast to single quadrupole GC-MS requiring several individual runs using full-scan and SIM mode, the GC-qTOFMS will allow the detection and verification of peak identities of all established aquatic biomarkers (IFAs / DHYAs / APAAs) with full sensitivity and mass spectra within one analysis. |
Type Of Material | Biological samples |
Year Produced | 2023 |
Provided To Others? | No |
Impact | This new method is high-throughput, delivering higher data quality than traditional methods based on low resolution GC-MS operated in SIM mode, limiting the number of false negatives and false positives. |
Description | Collaboration with foreign archaeologists for lipid residue analyses on archaeological pottery sherds |
Organisation | Deutsches Archäologisches Institut |
Country | Egypt |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | Analyses of lipid residues preserved in pottery sherds from various regions in mainland Europe to investigate spatial and diachronic changes in aquatic resource use in Prehistory. |
Collaborator Contribution | Provided material (pottery) for lipid residue analyses with archaeological information (e.g. contexts, dating). |
Impact | Collaboration were initiated before the award start date but were re-inforced with this award. Manuscripts in preparation. Multi-disciplinary collaboration: archaeology, chemistry. |
Start Year | 2023 |
Description | Collaboration with foreign archaeologists for lipid residue analyses on archaeological pottery sherds |
Organisation | Landesamt für Archäologie Sachsen |
Country | Germany |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | Analyses of lipid residues preserved in pottery sherds from various regions in mainland Europe to investigate spatial and diachronic changes in aquatic resource use in Prehistory. |
Collaborator Contribution | Provided material (pottery) for lipid residue analyses with archaeological information (e.g. contexts, dating). |
Impact | Collaboration were initiated before the award start date but were re-inforced with this award. Manuscripts in preparation. Multi-disciplinary collaboration: archaeology, chemistry. |
Start Year | 2023 |
Description | Collaboration with foreign archaeologists for lipid residue analyses on pottery sherds (cooking experiments) |
Organisation | University of Kiel |
Country | Germany |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Analyses of lipid residues preserved in pottery sherds from experimental cooking experiments. |
Collaborator Contribution | Provided material (pottery) for lipid residue analyses with experimental information. |
Impact | Manuscript in preparation. Multi-disciplinary collaboration: archaeology, chemistry. |
Start Year | 2022 |
Description | Collaboration with specialist in data processing |
Organisation | Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg |
Country | Germany |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | n/a |
Collaborator Contribution | Bespoke training in data processing. |
Impact | n/a Multi-disciplinary collaboration: chemistry, mass spectrometry, data science. |
Start Year | 2022 |