Tracking Kelp-like Marine Seaweed Fuel in the Archaeological Record of Atacama Desert Coast through Raman Spectroscopy: Insight from the Analysis of Macro- and Microremains of Charred Particles

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeophycology: New (Ethno)Archaeological Approaches to Understand the Contribution of Seaweed to the Subsistence and Social Life of Coastal Populations" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The use of seaweed as fuel has been mentioned in ethnographic sources from different world regions. Still, the archaeological record of seaweed burning is limited to contexts where preservation is exceptional, and the macroscopic discrimination of charred remains is possible. In the Atacama Desert coast (Northern Chile), the unusual preservation conditions of organic remains provide direct evidence of charred remains of kelp-type seaweed in at least ten archaeological contexts. Based on this high-quality record, we developed a methodological tool using Raman spectroscopy, which is particularly relevant in contexts with poor preservation of charred particles. Combined with a machine learning approach, this tool can robustly discriminate between seaweed and terrestrial plant chars in the archaeological record. The method is effective for macro-remains and potentially for chars observed in micromorphological thin sections. In this presentation, we discuss the application of this new methodology to charred macroremains and those observed in micromorphology thin sections. These charred particles were sampled from several Atacama Desert Coast shell-midden sites from the Early to the Late Holocene. Bringing together this evidence, we further discuss the long-term use of seaweed fuel by Atacama Desert Coast communities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeophycology: New (Ethno)Archaeological Approaches to Understand the Contribution of Seaweed to the Subsistence and Social Life of Coastal Populations   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38587.0