Abstract book ISBN:
978-80-907270-3-8 (EuropeanAssociation of Archaeologists); 978-84-9168-140-3 (Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona, vol. 1); 978-84-9168-143-4 (Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona, vol. 2)
Content:
The application of organic residue analyses to archaeological pottery plays an increasingly relevant role in understanding past societies. Such methodologies enable us to recognize fats, resins and other commodities processed in ancient vessels, and thus help us to understand better cultural changes (Cramp et al. 2014) and colonial interactions (Cramp et al. 2011). However, the Central and Western Mediterranean has remained on the margins of this debate, with few such analyses undertaken thus far.
My PhD project, supervised by Tamar Hodos and Lucy Cramp (University of Bristol), is overturning this situation. In partnership with several institutions, and especially the Soprintendenza Archeologia per le province di Cagliari e Oristano (Sardinia, Italy), we are analysing c.500 fragments of cookware from eight different Sardinian sites, including Phoenician, Punic and indigenous settlements. The material includes Phoenician and Punic pottery and local/indigenous pottery from between the 8th and 2nd centuries BCE, and all from recently excavated and stratified contexts. This paper presents our aims and our preliminary results in which, via gas chromatography (GC), GC/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) and GC-combustion-isotope ratio MS, we are assessing the contribution of different commodities, including animal carcass and dairy fats, aquatic products and plant waxes and oils in the sampled vessels, to assess dietary patterns and developments within and between sites during this period.