Changing Patterns of Marine Product Exploitation in Human Prehistory via Biomarker Proxies in Archaeological Pottery

海洋资源的可获得性和高营养价值意味着它们应该是史前沿海粮食经济的显著组成部分。然而，在考古记录中寻找海洋开发强度的证据是有问题的，部分原因是鱼类遗骸的生存和恢复能力差，海洋食品的加工以及渔具或其他相关人工制品的稀有性。根据“人如其食”的原则，人类骨胶原蛋白中海洋食物中稳定的碳和氮同位素信号最初被认为可以避免这些问题。人类遗骸的同位素分析表明，沿海和岛屿上的中石器时代人确实利用海洋食物，但新石器时代的人在采用农业之后，就放弃了来自海洋的食物。这些数据表明，从史前一直到历史时期，农民们都在寻求新的生活方式，并放弃了海洋。然而，最近对这些解释的批评指出，它们与考古证据不一致，考古证据表明，在整个史前时期，在欧洲大西洋沿岸的遗址上，海洋资源一直在不断被开采。这可能意味着胶原同位素分析不够灵敏，无法检测到海洋蛋白质的低消耗或零星消耗，也无法检测到海洋脂肪和油的开采。因此，追踪整个史前时期海洋开发的变化模式仍然是一个考古和科学问题。我们实验室最近的重大发现揭示了一种新的方法，可以高度敏感地检测海洋产品的加工过程。在无釉陶器中制备的商品中的有机残留物可以被吸收到陶瓷织物中；这些古老的残留物可以在数千年后被提取出来并进行表征。到目前为止，海洋脂肪很难识别，因为新鲜脂肪中的诊断化合物在埋藏后降解得非常快。然而，我们最近从海洋脂质中发现了几种新的高诊断性化合物，它们在考古时间尺度上持续存在。我们还表明，在陶器中幸存的氨基酸可以进一步了解在陶器容器中加工的商品。该项目将进一步研究这些新化合物的来源，并开发一种高灵敏度的方法来检测考古陶器中极低浓度的化合物。然后，我们将使用这些生物标记化合物来追踪从新石器时代早期开始的史前海洋食物消费模式。陶器可能是从苏格兰和爱尔兰的一系列遗址中获得的，在那里，随着农业的引入，海洋资源的开发将继续进行，尽管可能是在较低的水平上。我们还将研究来自新石器时代大陆沿海和内陆遗址的陶器，包括爱尔兰，苏格兰和伊比利亚北部，以比较现代人如何利用他们的环境。在存在较长职业序列的地方，我们将探索随时间变化的海洋资源开发模式。岛屿遗址，如刘易斯岛的诺斯顿和奥拉哈特湖的Eilean domhnwill，有从新石器时代早期到中世纪时期的定居证据，为这部分调查提供了机会。同样，在爱尔兰和伊比利亚北部半岛也存在着长寿的大陆遗址；最近的调查表明，中石器时代的土著狩猎采集者采用了新石器时代的传统，以及外来农民的殖民化。因此，这些新的海洋生物标志物代理的改进和实施为研究古代人类开发海洋资源的变化模式提供了新的见解，其分辨率是使用传统方法无法实现的。

The availability and high nutritional value of marine resources means that they should have been a conspicuous component of prehistoric coastal food economies. However, finding evidence for the intensity of marine exploitation in the archaeological record is problematic, due in part to the poor survival and recovery of fish remains, the processing of marine foods and the rarity of fishing paraphernalia or other related artefacts. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope signals for marine foods imprinted in human bone collagen were initially believed to circumvent these problems, based upon the principle that 'you are what you eat'. Evidence from isotopic analyses of human remains suggests that coastal and island Mesolithic people did utilise marine foods but that the Neolithic, after the adoption of farming, foods from the sea were abandoned. These data suggest that farmers throughout prehistory, and into historical times, negotiated new ways of living and turned their backs on the sea. However, recent critiques of these interpretations have noted that they are at odds with the archaeological evidence for the continued exploitation of marine resources throughout prehistory at sites along the Atlantic seaboard of Europe. This may signify that collagen isotope analysis is not sensitive enough to detect low or sporadic consumption of marine protein, nor will it detect the exploitation of marine fats and oils. Therefore, tracing changing patterns of marine exploitation throughout prehistory still pose an archaeological and scientific problem. Very significant recent findings in our laboratory have revealed a new way to detect the processing of marine products at a highly sensitive level. Organic residues from commodities prepared in unglazed pottery can become absorbed into the ceramic fabric; these ancient residues can then be extracted and characterised thousands of years later. Until now, marine fats have been difficult to identify since the diagnostic compounds in fresh fats degrade very rapidly upon burial. However, we have recently identified several new classes of highly diagnostic compounds derived from marine lipids, which persist over archaeological timescales. We have also shown that amino acids surviving in pottery can offer further insights into the commodities processed in the pottery vessels. This project will further investigate the origins of these novel compounds and develop a highly sensitive method for detecting them at very low concentrations in archaeological pottery. We will then use these biomarker compounds to track prehistoric patterns of marine food consumption, beginning with the early Neolithic. Pottery would be obtained from a range of Scottish and Irish sites where marine resource exploitation would have continued alongside the introduction of farming, albeit possibly at a lower level. We will also investigate pottery from Neolithic mainland coastal and inland sites, including Ireland, Scotland and northern Iberia, in order to compare how contemporary peoples were exploiting their environment. Where longer sequences of occupation exist, we will explore changing patterns in marine resource exploitation through time. Island sites, such as Northton on Lewis and Eilean Domhnuill in Loch Olabhat, which have evidence for settlement from the early Neolithic through to the medieval periods, offer opportunities for this part of the investigation. Likewise, long-lived mainland sites exist in Ireland and the Iberian northern peninsula; in the latter recent investigations have suggested both the adoption of Neolithic traditions by indigenous Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and the colonisation of incoming farmers. The refinement and implementation of these new marine biomarker proxies therefore offer the potential for new insights into changing patterns of marine resource exploitation by humans in antiquity at a resolution unachievable using more traditional approaches.