EAA 2023: Abstract

The consumption of dairy products during prehistoric times is relevant to better understand dietary habits, culinary traditions and economic activities from past populations. Their role during Recent Prehistory is, in this context, of special interest to shed new light on food resource adaptation during the Neolithization process and the development of more complex societies during the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. Biomolecular methods developed during the last decades allow us to directly assess the presence of dairy lipids in archaeological material culture, such as pottery, and of specific milk proteins like β-lactoglobulin (BLG) in human dental calculus. Combining both organic lipid residue analysis and palaeoproteomic analysis is the way to link dairy consumption to individual osteobiographies, as well as a tool to help detect changes in dairy processing and consumption patterns that might have resulted in higher human exposure to milk whey and thus lactose. While this type of analysis, especially organic lipid residue analysis, has been carried out profusely along several regions of Eurasia, the Western Mediterranean region is still relatively underexplored. We present here preliminary results of organic residue analysis on pottery and palaeoproteomics on human dental calculus from Neolithic to Bronze Age sites of Eastern Iberia.

Dairy, Palaeoproteomics, Lipid residue analysis, Prehistory, Iberia, Neolithic

Oral presentation

  Abstract (PDF)

DOMINGO CARLOS SALAZAR GARCÍA^1,2

Cynthianne Spiteri^3,4
Manuela De la Cruz Córdoba¹
Fallen Kai Yik Teoh³
Pablo García Borja⁵
Beatrice Demarchi³