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

海洋资源的可用性和高营养价值意味着它们应该是史前沿海食品经济的重要组成部分。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情况很差，海洋食品的加工以及捕鱼用具或其他相关手工艺品的稀少。最初，人们认为，基于“吃什么就是什么”的原则，海洋食物的稳定碳和氮同位素信号印刻在人类骨胶原中，可以解决这些问题。对人类遗骸进行同位素分析的证据表明，沿海和岛屿的中石器时代人确实利用海洋食物，但新石器时代在采用农业后，海洋食物被遗弃。这些数据表明，农民在整个史前，并进入历史时期，谈判新的生活方式，并把他们的背上的海洋。然而，最近对这些解释的批评指出，它们与史前时期欧洲大西洋沿岸沿着遗址持续开采海洋资源的考古证据不一致。这可能意味着胶原蛋白同位素分析不够灵敏，无法检测出海洋蛋白质的低消费或零星消费，也无法检测出海洋脂肪和油的开采。因此，追溯整个史前时期不断变化的海洋开发模式仍然是一个考古学和科学问题。我们实验室最近的一项非常重要的发现揭示了一种以高度敏感的水平检测海产品加工的新方法。在无釉陶器中制备的商品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和表征。到目前为止，海洋脂肪一直难以识别，因为新鲜脂肪中的诊断化合物在埋葬时降解得非常快。然而，我们最近发现了几类新的高度诊断化合物来自海洋脂质，坚持超过考古时间尺度。我们还表明，陶器中存活的氨基酸可以进一步了解陶器中加工的商品。该项目将进一步调查这些新化合物的来源，并开发一种高灵敏度的方法，用于检测考古陶器中浓度很低的化合物。然后，我们将使用这些生物标志物化合物来追踪史前海洋食物消费模式，从新石器时代早期开始。陶器将从苏格兰和爱尔兰的一系列遗址中获得，在那里，海洋资源的开发将继续伴随着农业的引入，尽管可能处于较低的水平。我们还将调查新石器时代大陆沿海和内陆遗址的陶器，包括爱尔兰，苏格兰和北方伊比利亚，以比较当代人民如何利用他们的环境。在存在较长的占用序列的地方，我们将探讨海洋资源开发随着时间的推移而变化的模式。岛屿遗址，如刘易斯的诺斯顿和洛赫奥拉巴特的艾琳·多姆赫努伊，有证据表明从新石器时代早期到中世纪时期都有人定居，为这部分调查提供了机会。同样，在爱尔兰和伊比利亚北方半岛也存在长寿的大陆遗址;在后者，最近的调查表明，土著中石器时代的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用指标的完善和实施，有可能使人们对古代人类不断变化的海洋资源开发模式有新的认识，而这是使用更传统的方法无法实现的。

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.