Mass Spectrometry Database of Archaeologically Relevant Plants for Organic Residue Analysis

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Organic residue analysis in archaeology using mass spectrometry (MS) is a robust technique to detect and explore ancient biomolecules for reconstructing past cultural behavior, such as diet composition and even specific recipes. Studies often involve targeted MS analyses of known or suspected substances, while untargeted analyses characterizing broad ranges of molecules are less common despite their potential to identify unexpected compounds. Regardless of approach, residue studies depend on the quality of reference samples in metabolomics databases, especially with regard to dietary substances like plants, but such reference collections are rarely accessible. This project bridges this gap by generating an untargeted MS-based metabolomics dataset of wild and domesticated plant species from the Americas with significance to Indigenous communities, as well as Old World plants. Through generating novel high-quality public plant references from different spatial and temporal contexts, other researchers can compare their unknown samples against our data, increasing molecules identified from plant residues. Moreover, the multiregional structuring of the plant database allows archaeologists to provide more contextualization to analyses without biasing results to a single region. These data also create opportunities for researchers to explore deeper questions about past and present plant use, regardless of experimental conditions or archaeological context.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37396.0