Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/N011317/1
PALAEOLIPIDOMICS: A NEW BIOMARKER APPROACH TO TRACE CEREAL AGRICULTURE IN PREHISTORY
Grant Award
- Principal Investigator:
- Dr L Cramp, University of Bristol, School of Arts
- Grant held at:
- University of Bristol, School of Arts
- Science Area:
- Marine
- Terrestrial
- Overall Classification:
- Panel E
- ENRIs:
- Biodiversity
- Environmental Risks and Hazards
- Global Change
- Natural Resource Management
- Science Topics:
- Mass spectrometry
- Neolithic period
- Organic residue analysis
- Prehistoric humans
- Stone age
- Science-Based Archaeology
- Lipid metabolism
- Metabolomics / Metabonomics
- Metabolic fingerprinting
- Metabolic profiling
- Metabolomics / Metabonomics
- Plant responses to environment
- Landscape & Environ. Archaeol.
- Prehistoric Archaeology
- Ancient grains
- Animal domestication
- Biomolecular archaeology
- Bronze age
- Early farming
- Environmental transitions
- Gas chromatography
- Human dispersal
- Iron age
- Abstract:
- The adoption of a cereal-based diet set in train some of the most fundamental shifts in the global history of modern humans, yet the process by which this was introduced into many parts of the world is not understood. More specifically, at locations where conditions were not favourable for cereal agriculture, a number of models have been put forward, proposing a staggered, drawn-out or even failed introduction of a cereal-based economy as alternatives to a swift and full-blown appearance of the entire farming 'package' of crops and livestock. This is important for determining i) the social mechanism by which farming spread across Europe and hence its societal impact and ii) the extent to which environmental and climatic constraints had to be overcome to establish agriculture in the long-term. However, testing this on a large scale is challenged by uncertainties in the archaeological record, which hampers our understanding of the adoption and adaptation of farming. Here we propose tackling this through developing a methodology that enables us to trace the importance of cereal products in prehistory through biological markers (biomarkers) left in archaeological pottery used to process them. Reconstructing dietary change through patterns in fat (lipid) molecules extracted from the pores of unglazed pottery vessels is now a well-established approach that has developed over the course of over four decades. These preserved fingerprints in pots have enabled major patterns in human subsistence to be reconstructed, including earliest direct evidence for dairying in Europe and an abrupt and sustained shift away from marine economies in the British Isles lasting nearly 5000 years. Much previous research has focused upon fats of animal origin; however, plant foods such as cereals, which ultimately became a key staple in many societies across the world at some point in time, are currently invisible using this approach. This is because cereals are low in fat content compared with animal fats, and because no identifying signature has yet been established that would attribute lipid residues of cereal origin unambiguously to this source. We propose to address this through developing a novel 'paleolipidomics' approach: that involves looking at the whole profile of the components of modern grain lipids and in particular characterizing minor classes that together may act as identifiers for cereal-processing. Through degradation experiments, we will confirm the most robust suite of markers that will survive over archaeological timescales and then test their persistence through analysis of archaeological pottery sherds from Iron Age Britain and Neolithic Germany where there is strong archaeological evidence for a cereal-based economy. We will then employ a cutting-edge and highly sensitive analytical approach using accurate-mass gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to detect these signatures in archaeological pottery extracts from two key localities (Britain and the Eastern Baltic), testing the prevalence of cereal processing against models proposed for the introduction of farming to these regions ca. 6000 years ago.
- NERC Reference:
- NE/N011317/1
- Grant Stage:
- Completed
- Scheme:
- Standard Grant FEC
- Grant Status:
- Closed
- Programme:
- Standard Grant - NI
This grant award has a total value of £266,035
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| DI - Other Costs | Indirect - Indirect Costs | DA - Investigators | DI - Staff | DA - Estate Costs | DA - Other Directly Allocated | DI - T&S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £12,316 | £109,546 | £11,945 | £103,374 | £20,936 | £3,529 | £4,391 |
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