Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Developing Approaches to Food Analysis

博士论文改进补助金：开发食品分析方法

• 批准号: 2032037
• 负责人: Sturt Manning
• 金额: $ 2.97万
• 依托单位: Cornell University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-09-01 至 2024-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2032037&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Improvement; Grant; Developing

Food is foundational to everything from daily life and the economy to social connections and religious practices. Archaeological finds of ancient pottery offer an abundant source of material evidence for the ways people stored, prepared, cooked, and ate food from prehistory to today. Traces of food preserved in the pores of pottery provide direct evidence for how people used their pots in the past; combined with radiocarbon dating of individual molecules from these food residues, they are a powerful tool for reconstructing the practices that shaped the food systems which form the foundation of today’s global food system. Past scholarship has paid little attention to how the diversity of environments and food sources worldwide might complicate interpretations of what a pot once held. This project will develop a robust approach to interpreting the sources of food residues in pottery that is sensitive to differences in the environment. Through collaborations with researchers in food science, engineering, chemistry, and soil sciences, this research offers contributions to fields such as food science, sustainability, and renewable energy, and unique training opportunities for student research assistants.The research team will study the complications caused by regional differences in climate and the environment: different conditions can create more than one possible interpretation of the food sources that could have caused the particular collection of molecules observed by an archaeologist in a pot fragment. This problem arises because many foods are made up of similar molecules, or can look similar because of environmental processes at archaeological sites that break down food over time. The researchers will develop methods to combat this problem, focusing on the Mediterranean, a region with a distinctive climate and a uniquely rich archaeological and historical record where key regional food systems developed. By developing a novel laboratory-based experiment that can incorporate different soils in a simulation of the breakdown of different food products over time, the researchers will provide an efficient, region-specific experimental design applicable worldwide, not only for archaeology but for any field (such as food science or sustainability) that requires the study of how food breaks down in soils. Drawing on supercritical fluid extraction, a technique used in renewable energies research, the team will also produce an optimized method for recovering food residues that minimizes the loss of interpretative information about a pot’s contents. The researchers will also evaluate whether environmental differences pose a challenge to using radiocarbon dating of individual food molecules to link the archaeology of everyday life to a historical timeline. By applying these developments to three case-studies the researchers will produce robust datasets that advance the understanding of past food practices and their entanglement in politics, religion, and the economy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

食物是从日常生活、经济到社会联系和宗教活动等一切事物的基础。古代陶器的考古发现为人们从史前到今天储存、准备、烹饪和食用食物的方式提供了丰富的物证。陶器孔隙中保存的食物痕迹为人们过去如何使用陶器提供了直接证据；结合这些食物残渣中单个分子的放射性碳测年，它们是重建塑造食品系统的实践的强大工具，而食品系统构成了当今全球食品系统的基础。过去的学术研究很少关注世界范围内环境和食物来源的多样性如何使对锅曾经容纳的东西的解释变得复杂。该项目将开发一种强有力的方法来解释对环境差异敏感的陶器中食物残留的来源。通过与食品科学、工程、化学和土壤科学领域的研究人员合作，这项研究为食品科学、可持续发展和可再生能源等领域做出了贡献，并为学生研究助理提供了独特的培训机会。研究小组将研究气候和环境区域差异造成的复杂性：不同的条件可以对食物来源产生不止一种可能的解释，而这些解释可能导致考古学家在罐子碎片中观察到的特殊分子集合。出现这个问题的原因是许多食物由相似的分子组成，或者由于考古遗址的环境过程随着时间的推移分解食物而看起来相似。研究人员将开发解决这一问题的方法，重点关注地中海地区，该地区气候独特，拥有独特丰富的考古和历史记录，是关键区域粮食系统发展的地方。通过开发一种新颖的实验室实验，可以将不同的土壤纳入模拟不同食品随时间分解的过程中，研究人员将提供一种适用于全球的高效、针对特定地区的实验设计，不仅适用于考古学，而且适用于任何需要研究食物如何在土壤中分解的领域（例如食品科学或可持续性）。利用超临界流体萃取（一种用于可再生能源研究的技术），该团队还将开发一种回收食物残渣的优化方法，最大限度地减少有关锅中内容物的解释信息的损失。研究人员还将评估环境差异是否对利用单个食物分子的放射性碳测年将日常生活考古学与历史时间线联系起来构成挑战。通过将这些进展应用于三个案例研究，研究人员将生成强大的数据集，以促进对过去的食品实践及其与政治、宗教和经济的纠葛的理解。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。