Using Organic Compound-Specific Stable Isotope Ratios to Identify Animals in Prehistoric Foodways of Southeast Asia

Summary

Recent advances in isotopic analysis have enabled archaeologists to move beyond subsistence and diet toward the full chaîne opératoire of foodways that includes inference of past culinary practices. Together with faunal identification, isotopic analysis of organic residues derived from ancient pottery helps to create linkages between material culture (i.e., pottery) and how animals were prepared and consumed, which, in turn, may be used to infer aspects of identity. Isotopic databases of modern animal fats have been established to differentiate organic residues by faunal category. However, these databases may be area-specific. For example, variations in carbon isotope ratios may result from myriad extrinsic factors. Southeast Asia has modern databases for assessing bulk carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratios from charred surface residues on pottery, but none for the carbon specific organic molecules from both surface and absorbed residues. Thus, this paper presents compound specific isotopic analysis of palmitic (C16) and stearic (C18) acids of extracted lipid residues from modern pots with known cooking histories and modern faunas from Southeast Asia. This database will be compared with others, and its ability to assist in interpreting Southeast Asian prehistoric foodways in the region will be discussed.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Applications of Isotope Research in Zooarchaeology

Keywords

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