Amino acid analysis of food residues in pottery: a field and laboratory study

Abstract

When food is cooked in a clay pot, traces remain within the fabric and in charred deposits on the walls of the vessel. To better define the parameters of food deposits in pottery, field research was carried out in Papua New Guinea (PNG) on cooking methods and pottery making as they relate to organic residues. Samples of common foods, pottery with known residues, and newly made pottery for laboratory studies were collected and analysed for amino acids using high performance liquid chromatography. The background amino acid content of fired pottery was found to be negligible compared to food residues incorporated into the vessel walls during cooking. Mainly free amino acids are absorbed into the pot matrix when foods are boiled. It is these amino acids which must be analysed when making comparisons to food standards. Amino acid results for food residues and foods cooked in the laboratory duplicated those from samples obtained in PNG. Ageing studies carried out under varying conditions on food and food residues within the pottery fabric found that amino acids were quite stable especially under dry ageing conditions.

Examination of prehistoric artifacts via fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) techniques using modern environmental stewardship

“…Although some researchers (Frankhauser, 1997;Rafferty, 2002) have argued that methyl esters may not be the best derivatives for the mass spectrometric analysis of lipids, such derivatives are so simple in structure and widely used for fatty acid analysis in general that they are invariably the standard derivatization for analytical mass spectrometry. Without further derivatization, they are of limited applicability for structural analysis of mono-or dienoic fatty acids, but they can often be of value for polyunsaturated fatty acids, and those with functional groups other than double bonds, especially when spectra of authentic compounds are available for comparison (Frankel, 1987(Frankel, , 1998Fritsch and Deatherage, 1956).…”

Mixed results of seven methods for organic residue analysis applied to one vessel with the residue of a known foodstuff

“…2). as many proteins are species·specific [24,25) Labora tory J re moved the outs ide surfaces o f the s herd, to avoid possible contamination, after which a tolal of 12 samples were obtained at evenly spaced inle rvals from the rim to the base or the vessel segmenl, six from the inte rior and six from the exterior. Aliquols of Ihe ceramic powder, weighing an ave rage of 4.9 mg, wcre manually compressed in ti n foi l capsules and combusted in a Carlo Erba NA2500 Carbon concentrations ave raged 2.69% on the vessel interior and 1.65% on the exterior.…”

Gc–ms Analysis and Fatty Acid Ratios of Archaeological Potsherds From the Western Great Basin of North America*

“…Over the last decade there has been a marked increase in the number of papers taking this approach (e.g., Evershed et al 1994, 1997, 2003; Charters et al . 1997; Frankhauser 1997; Malainey et al 1999a–c; Mottram et al . 1999; Stott et al .…”