Cereal foods and nutrition in ancient Egypt

Foods, 2024

Within the realm of archaeology, the analysis of biomolecules assumes significant importance in elucidating historical dietary patterns and their implications for contemporary contexts. To achieve this, knowledge and tools of both chemistry and archaeology are essential to yield objective outcomes and conduct analyses of archaeological materials for the detection of biomolecules. Usually, only minuscule remnants of ceramic fragments are retrieved from excavations, which limits the feasibility of comprehensive laboratory analysis. This study aimed to establish a protocol for analyzing fatty acids and starch from archaeological food utensils with minimal sample quantities. Various experiments were conducted to replicate preparations that might have occurred in archaeological vessels, aiming to establish the optimal protocol. The analyses were performed using clay griddles, subjecting vegetable oil to varying temperatures for fatty acid assessment. For starch analysis, a series of experiments encompassed diverse forms of potato preparations (pulp, chuño, tortilla, carbonization, and freeze-drying) and maize (flour, tortilla, and carbonization). The verification of the experiments was confirmed by conducting identical analyses, as developed in the current study, on authentic archaeological fragments. The principal outcomes of this investigation include the successful extraction of both types of biomolecules using only 0.25 g of the sample, obtained through direct scraping from the vessel. Soxhlet extraction was identified as the most efficient strategy to recover fatty acids. Additionally, a comprehensive protocol for the identification of starch extraction was developed. This study has, for the first time, elucidated two detailed methodologies for the extraction of fatty acids and starch in scenarios in which researchers can obtain limited quantities of archaeological food utensil fragments.

2016

Review of Archaeology of Food: An Encyclopedia, by Karen Bescherer Metheny and Mary C. Beaudry. Historical Archaeology 50(4):177-179.

2019

What do you want to know about the past? Do you wonder about family lives, or about international relations? Are you curious about ancient warfare, or about human sacrifice? Perhaps you're interested in the origins of private property? In prehistoric gender roles? Possibly you're fascinated by how ethnic identities develop, or by how members of a faith vary in religious observance? You will find all of those topics in this book, because you can investigate all of them via food. As omnivores we human beings face a world full of potential edibles. Our intellectual and physical abilities expand our options still further, allowing us to alter nature's menus by growing, cooking, and combining foods. We thus have choices about what to eat, how to get it, how to prepare it, how to consume it, and how to discard it. The world is dauntingly full of options. Our responses are constrained by the ecologies in which we live, the technologies to which we have access, and the communities in which we live, but choices remain (e.g., Brumberg, 1988:164-188; Bynum, 1987). We make those choices not just in accordance with our economies but also with our politics and our faiths, our heritages and our ambitions. In doing so, we reinforce or challenge existing traditionsand we propel our cultures and civilizations onwards through time. Our foodways reflect our lives. Our foodways also leave traces in the archaeological record. Plant and animal remains are still scattered throughout ancient neighborhoods and campgrounds. Human remains lie in graves and in dumps, their physical and chemical characteristics shaped by ancient diets and activity patterns. ("We are what we eat," after all.) Ovens, bars, and storage bins stand inside homes, palaces, and bars. Microscopic fat deposits remain in the walls of prehistoric cooking pots, and starches, proteins, and pollen linger in centuries-old dental plaque that no dentist scraped from someone's teeth.

Archaeometry, 1989

The archaeometric literature is filling rapidly with articles extolling the virtues of employing the trace element contents of archaeological bone in the reconstruction of ancient diets and age-or sex-related bone metabolism studies (e.g. Bratter et al. 1977;

Archaeometry, 1989

The archaeometric literature is filling rapidly with articles extolling the virtues of employing the trace element contents of archaeological bone in the reconstruction of ancient diets and age-or sex-related bone metabolism studies (e.g. Bratter et al. 1977;

One of the most important advantages of LIBS that make it suitable for the analysis of archeological materials is that it is a quasi-nondestructive technique. Archeological mandibles excavated from Qubbet el Hawa Cemetery, Aswan, were subjected to elemental analysis in order to reconstruct the dietary patterns of the middle class of the Aswan population throughout three successive eras: the First Intermediate Period (FIP), the Middle Kingdom (MK), and the Second Intermediate Period (SIP). The bone Sr/Ca and Ba/Ca ratios were significantly correlated, so the Sr/Ca ratios are considered to represent the ante-mortem values. It was suggested that the significantly low FIP Sr/Ca compared to that of both the MK and the SIP was attributed to the consumption of unusual sorts of food and imported cereals during years of famine, while the MK Sr/Ca was considered to represent the amelioration of climatic, social, economic, and political conditions in this era of state socialism. The SIP Sr/Ca, which is nearly the same as that of the MK, was considered to be the reflection of the continuity of the individualism respect and state socialism and a reflection of agriculture conditions amelioration under the reign of the 17th Dynasty in Upper Egypt.

no abstract

KOS, Mateja, et al. Preteklost pod mikroskopom : naravoslovne raziskave v muzeju. Ljubljana: Narodni muzej Slovenije. 2017, str. 145-153, 2017

S tudies of organic food residues in prehistoric vessels in archaeology are embedded within the context of interdisciplinary and archaeometric approaches to the study of Late Stone Age ceramic vessels. Th ey are associated with "biomolecular archaeology of lipids" and the "archaeological biomarker revolution" on the one hand, and with the study of the relationship between the form and the function of ceramic vessels, contextualised within the "operational sequences" of prehistoric pottery production, on the other. 1 Th ey focus on discovering residues of animal adipose and milk fats preserved in the earliest ceramic vessels in the Near East and in south-eastern Europe at the onset of dairy farming and the supposed demic diff usion 1 of the fi rst cattle herders into Europe. 2 Th ey constitute the key part of the "cultural niche construction" theory, and the theory on the coevolutionary relationship between cultural practices and genetic selection processes. 3 Th ey also participate in studies on the transition from huntergatherer economies to production or farming and stockbreeding economies by tracing the fats of terrestrial, sea, and freshwater mammals, fi sh, and molluscs. 4

Interdisciplinaria Archaeologica. Natural Sciences in Archaeology, 2018

Archaeobotanical micro-residuals are today a major focus in artefactual and bioarchaeological investigations. Though starch grains analysis may be regarded as marginal, it can be a useful analysis for archaeological research, being a method suitable for the investigation of stone artefacts and ceramic vessels. Soil samples and dental calculus can also be examined. Through the use of various extraction methods it is possible to answer questions of diet composition and purpose of stone tool use. As documented in recent studies examining the composition of the human diet, starch grain research should be one of the main areas of archaeobotanical investigation. Its applicability can be seen in studies where it is useful to define the role of plants in human subsistence. New evidence of plant use in archaeological contexts in the Stone Age, beginning in the Palaeolithic and ending in the Neolithic, has been presented in recent papers. Current archaeological studies, including those using starch grain analyses, have particularly indicated the higher ratio of plants in the diet during the Palaeolithic period.