Check out the traces of the clay pot to recreate the ancient recipe

The residues of these seven lachamber pots retained evidence of all meals cooked with them. (Photo courtesy of Melanie Miller)

If you dug up an ancient ceramic pot, do not clean it. Perhaps it contains the secrets of past cooking.

A research team led by an archaeologist at the University of California, Berkeley found that unglazed ceramic cookware retained not only the last cooked dinner, but potentially the rest of the early dishes cooked for the entire duration of the pot. Found to open a window to the past.

Investigation resultAs reported in the Journal Scientific Report, cooking gastronomic habits dating back thousands of years, such as Aztec turkey, human pozole, or bean stew that appears to have been served at the Last Supper, , The pottery from which they were prepared.

“Our data can help people better reconstruct the diets and certain ingredients they have consumed in the past, and as a result, shed light on social, political and environmental relationships within the ancient community. You can, “said Melanie Miller, a research co-author, a postdoctoral fellow at Berkeley’s Archaeological Research Facility and the University of Otago, New Zealand.

In a one-year cooking experiment led by Miller and Berkeley archaeologist Christine Hastorf, seven chefs each purchased 50 new meals made from a combination of venison, corn, and flour La Chamba ceramic pots. Cooked in. This sturdy, polished black clay cookware dates back to pre-Columbian South America. Handmade boats are still popular today for the preparation and serving of traditional dishes.

The group came up with an idea at Hastorf’s Archeology of Food Graduate Seminar in Berkeley. By analyzing the chemical residues of meals cooked in each pot, researchers found that the deposits found in ancient cooking vessels also reflected the last cooked dish or the remains of the previous meal only. I tried to find out if I would.

In addition to receiving donated deer roadkills, they bought a large amount of whole grains and a mill that Hastorf had set up in the garage and crushed them. The group then developed a repertoire of six recipes using venison and whole and milled grains.

They have selected the main ingredients that can be found in many parts of the world. For example, two recipes focused on hominy, made by immersing corn in an alkaline solution, while the other two use flour.

“We chose foods based on how easy it is to distinguish the chemicals in the food from each other and how the pot reacts to the isotopes and chemical values ​​of the food.” Hastorf, a professor of anthropology at Berkeley who studies food, said, among other things, archeology.

How they conducted the study

Each of the seven chefs cooked an meal weekly in a lachamber pot using the group’s designated ingredients. “The muddy meals were mild and we didn’t eat them,” Miller said.

It was baked every eight meals to recreate the types of carbonized residues that archaeologists often encounter in ancient pots and to mimic what normally happens in pot life. Between each meal, the pots were cleaned with water and branches from apple trees. Surprisingly, they did not break during the course of the study.

In Berkeley Center for Stable Isotope Biogeography, The team analyzed the charred patina that occurred in the burnt ruins and pots. Stable isotopes are atoms whose composition does not decay over time and are useful for archaeological research. Analysis of lipids and lipids absorbed in clay cookware was performed at the University of Bristol, England.

Overall, chemical analysis of food residues has shown that different meal time scales are represented by different residues. For example, the charred part at the bottom of the pot contained traces of the latest cooked meal, while the rest of the previous meal was patina and fat that had accumulated elsewhere inside the pot. It was found in the residual lipids absorbed in. The pottery itself.

These results provide scientists with new tools for studying old diets, as well as clues to food production, supply and distribution chains of the past.

“Others have taken this experiment to the next level, opening the door for a longer timeline to identify food residues,” Miller said.

In addition to Miller and Hastov, the co-authors of the study are Alexandra McClary and Jeffery Taylor of the University of California, Berkeley. Helen Welton, Simon Haman, Lucy Crump, Richard Evershed of the University of Bristol. Gillian Swift at the Banis Pua Hibi Shop Museum in Hawaii. Sophia Marine of the University of Southern California. Kirsten Dunst and independent scholar Fanabex at the University of Hawaii at West Oahu.