The remains of those who perished at Herculaneum in 79 CE offer a unique opportunity to examine lifeways across an ancient community who lived and died together. Historical sources often allude to differential access to foodstuffs across Roman society but provide no direct or quantitative information. By determining the stable isotope values of amino acids from bone collagen and deploying Bayesian models that incorporate knowledge of protein synthesis, we were able to reconstruct the diets of 17 adults from Herculaneum with unprecedented resolution. Significant differences in the proportions of marine and terrestrial foods consumed were observed between males and females, implying that access to food was differentiated according to gender. The approach also provided dietary data of sufficient precision for comparison with assessments of food supply to modern populations, opening up the possibility of benchmarking ancient diets against contemporary settings where the consequences for health are better understood.
Bradford Scholars -how to deposit your paper
Overview
Copyright check• Check if your publisher allows submission to a repository.• Use the Sherpa RoMEO database if you are not sure about your publisher's position or email openaccess@bradford.ac.uk.
Pottery found at Spirit Cave, Thailand, has been claimed as among the earliest ceramics in the world – a radiocarbon date of 7500 BP being obtained from associated charcoal. However radiocarbon dating of organic resin found on some of the sherds gave a date of around 3000 BP. This is another example of improved precision in dating by pin-pointing the context and using AMS. The authors describe how it was done and assess its validity
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.