Tracing Cannabis in the Historic Past: New Insights from Chemical Residue Analysis

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Today, marijuana consumption is becoming decriminalized across the Western world. This legal change is often followed by increased research activity, specifically regarding crop ‘improvement’ and the concentration of the plant’s psychoactive compounds. This situation resembles the process characterizing the commodification of tobacco during the Colonial era. Nonetheless, while archaeologists, historians, and others have accumulated an important body of evidence around the distribution, repurposing, and impact of tobacco in new consumer populations, the same cannot be said for psychoactive cannabis. Empirical data about its initial move from southern Asia to eastern Africa, its journey across the continent, and its eventual spread to the Americas remains scarce. This appears to be partially due to the low preservation potential of major cannabinoids such as THC and CBD. Here, we will present the ORA results of ethnographic and historic African pipes. Our discussion will focus on the potential of minor cannabinoids to serve as biomarkers in the analysis of residues that have undergone pyrolysis. We hope that more accurate protocols for the study of archaeological artifacts can help in reconstructing the history of cannabis. More importantly, a clearer picture of past shifts in consumer dynamics could contribute to inform present-day policy debates.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39881.0