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.

粮食是从日常生活，经济到社会联系和宗教习俗的基础。古代陶器的考古发现为人们从先验到今天的存储，准备，烹饪和吃食物的方式提供了丰富的物质证据。保存在陶器毛孔中的食物痕迹为人们如何使用锅子的方式提供了直接的证据。结合从这些食物保留的单个分子的放射性碳年代，它们是重建塑造食品系统的实践的强大工具，这些习惯构成了构成当今全球食品系统的基础。过去的科学很少关注全球环境和食物来源的多样性如何使人们对锅曾经拥有的东西进行解释。该项目将开发出一种强大的方法来解释陶器中粮食保留的来源，这对环境的差异很敏感。通过与食品科学，工程，化学和土壤科学领域的研究人员的合作，该研究为食品科学，可持续性和可再生能源等领域提供了贡献，以及为学生研究助理提供的独特培训机会。研究团队将研究由环境和环境造成的区域差异所致：不同的环境可以通过对阶级进行阶级来造成库列的批准，从而使某种阶级的诠释能够造成特定的群体的群体来源。出现的问题是因为许多食物是由类似的分子组成的，或者由于环境过程的环境过程，随着时间的流逝而分解食物的原因。研究人员将开发解决这个问题的方法，重点关注地中海，这个地区具有独特的气候和独特的考古学和历史记录，在这里开发了关键的区域粮食系统。通过开发一个新型的基于实验室的实验，该实验可以将不同的土壤纳入随着时间的流逝的模拟中的分解，研究人员将提供一种适用于考古学的高效，特定区域的实验设计，不仅用于考古学（例如食品科学或可持续性），需要研究食物如何在土壤中分解。利用超临界流体提取，这是一种可再生能源研究中使用的技术，该团队还将生成一种优化的方法来恢复食物保留，以最大程度地减少有关锅内容的解释性信息的损失。研究人员还将评估环境差异是否对使用单个食物分子的放射性碳年代构成挑战，将日常生活的考古学联系起来与历史时间表联系起来。通过将这些发展应用于三个案例实习，研究人员将生成强大的数据集，以提高对过去的食品实践及其在政治，宗教和经济中的理解。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛影响的审查标准来通过评估而被视为珍贵的支持。