Olmec Asphalt Trade Revealed by Combined Biomarker and Chemometric Analysis

Summary

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

Within the Olmec region, resources such as basalt, asphalt, cacao, kaolin clay, and hematite pigment are available in discreet areas. This uneven distribution of raw materials has led some scholars to suggest that Olmec leaders controlled the sources of raw materials and regional trade, from which they derived their economic and political power. The purpose of this study is to improve our understanding of Olmec trade for asphalt, which was commonly used as a binder or sealant. Our novel approach combines molecular archaeology based on the geochemistry of biomarkers (biodegradation-resistant molecular fossils) with chemometrics (multivariate statistics) to identify genetic relationships among crude oils, oil seeps, and artifacts excavated from ten Olmec sites. Seven source-related biomarker ratios based on peak heights from the terpane and sterane mass chromatograms were calculated. We employed HCA dendrograms, which yield a simple view of families of samples where cluster distance is a measure of the degree of similarity among samples. Our results illustrate the intra-regional movement of asphalt, shedding light on patterns of Olmec commodity exchange, intra-regional relationships, and interactions, providing little evidence for elite control of asphalt procurement or trade.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37626.0