DIET
In addition to climates and natural environments, archaeologists reconstruct the diets of those who occupied a site using plant and animal remains. It is important to realize that there is a big difference between a meal and a diet. A meal is a single event—your dinner last night, for example. From an archaeological perspective, it is nearly impossible to reconstruct a single event at a site. That kind of information typically comes from analyses of fecal matter, stomach contents, and written records. Diet, on the other hand, is the long-term pattern of consumption and represents the types of foods eaten on a regular basis. Many lines of evidence are used to reconstruct the diet of a culture. Archaeologists will turn to two areas of study, paleoethnobotany and zooarchaeology to examine the diet of past cultures. However, as noted earlier, archaeologists have to understand the preservation of the site and its taphonomy (see Chapter 4) to determine whether the archaeological materials in question were brought to the site and consumed by humans or wound up in the archaeological record in another way.
diet
The long-term pattern of consumption and represents the types of foods eaten on a regular basis.
Fruits and Vegetables
Paleoethnobotany is the study of how plants and plant-based materials were used by humans in the past. When trying to reconstruct diet using macrobotanical remains, archaeologists need a large sample size. One cannot conclude anything about diet from the presence of one peach pit or one grape seed; in fact, from such scant evidence, it is not clear whether the fruit was eaten at all, let alone whether it was a regular part of a human’s diet. When using pollen data, or microbotanical, archaeologists must collect a minimum of 100 grams of pollen of a species before they can clearly determine the plant’s importance in a diet.
paleoethnobotany
The study of how plants and plant-based materials were used by humans in the past.
Whatever types of plant remains are recovered, it is important to quantify the remains by weight and number and arrange them graphically by abundance much in the same way palynological pollen data is presented when reconstructing a past landscape. Plant remains are both weighed and counted because either method alone would favor certain types of plants over others.
It is important to reconstruct diets not only for hunter-gatherers and other prehistoric groups but also for more-recent agricultural groups. An analysis of chemical residues such as proteins, fatty acids, and DNA can be used for simple identifications of plants in agricultural settings. Residues (phytoliths) found on artifacts such as stone sickles used to harvest wheat, for example, can confirm that the occupants engaged in harvesting practices. The study of the domestication of wild plant species is also important in archaeology. Sometimes the transition from wild to domestic is fairly easy to see archaeologically, such as morphological changes in a plant’s structure. For example, the transition from maize to the corn cob we know today is obvious.
Meats
Zooarchaeology is the branch of archaeology that studies animal remains from archaeological sites. When analyzing animal remains for their role in a people’s diet, archaeologists have to take several factors into account. One is how the animal ended up at the site. Another important consideration is whether the animal was eaten or was used for some other purpose, such as providing milk or antlers, horns, and skins for tools and clothing. To determine if the animal was used for food, archaeologists look for marks on bones that indicate that a human scraped meat from the bone with a tool or cut the bones versus marks of predators gnawing on the carcass and etching of the bones by plants. A scanning electron microscope can examine the bones for minute signs of wear. Human-made tools typically leave V-shaped marks while gnawing of carnivores leaves more rounded marks.
zooarchaeology
The branch of archaeology that studies animal remains from archaeological sites.
When trying to make sense of animal remains at an archaeological site, some basic data are collected and tabulated before they are examined more thoroughly. Often the first step is to identify the species, if possible. Then, the remains are quantified to determine both how many pieces of bone there are and the likely number of individuals the remains represent. The raw count of pieces of bone is the number of identified specimens (NISP). So, say, twelve femurs from ancient cattle. The minimum number of individuals (MNI) accounts for how many individual animals can be represented by the number of specimens. Consider the twelve femurs from cattle. If four of the specimens are right femurs and eight are left femurs, the MNI (minimum number) is four since each cow had only one right femur. Archaeologists also calculate the meat weight provided by an individual specimen, which varies with the age and sex of the animal and the season in which it died.
number of identified specimens (NISP)
The raw count of pieces of bone collected from a site.
minimum number of individuals (MNI)
The fewest possible number of people or animals represented in a skeletal assemblage.
meat weight
A calculated estimate of the biomass of an individual specimen.
After collecting basic quantitative data about bones at a site, archaeologists study other aspects of the remains, such as the sexes and likely ages of the animals, which can provide clues about whether the animals were wild or domesticated. Methods for determining the age and sex of animals from bones are similar to ones used with human skeletons. Like humans, male and female animals have different pelvic structures. Archaeologists also look at teeth, horns, and antlers since female deer species do not have antlers and male carnivores typically have larger canine teeth. They also examine the eruption and amount of wear on teeth and how developed long bones such as femurs are, which points to the age of the animal. Seasonality—when the animals died—is estimated using the animals’ characteristics, such as births and shedding of antlers that occur only in certain seasons. Migratory patterns are also useful for determining the time of year when many species of mammals and birds died.
One last feature that is important to archaeologists is whether the animals were domesticated or wild. As with plants, many physical properties of an animal change as a result of domestication. In general, as they are domesticated, animals tend to get smaller, and changes in their diets can be reflected in their teeth. The presence of some agricultural tools such as plows and yokes indicate that the animals were used to work the land. Finally, some deformities and diseases evident on animal skeletons also point to domestication; osteoarthritis, for example, is often present in the lower limbs of animals used for plowing and transportation.
Let's Look At Teeth
Finally, to truly understand what human occupants of a site ate, archaeologists examine and analyze their teeth. Abrasive particles in food can leave striations on the enamel, and the orientation and length of the striations are directly related to the occupants of the site as well as their food preparation and cooking processes. Abrasive particles in food also lead to tooth decay. Native Californians, for example, routinely ate acorn meal, an extremely gritty food that left marks on their teeth and accelerated tooth decay, distinguishing them from other native people who did not consume acorns. Substantial tooth decay and loss can also be an indicator of diets dominated by starchy and sugary foods and carbohydrates, which would have been consumed because they were the most abundant food source. In recent years, analysis of isotopic markers found in both teeth and human bones have expanded our knowledge of past peoples’ long-term dietary patterns, including whether they relied primarily on land or marine resources for food. Additionally, isotopic markers can identify substantial shifts in diets, which are typically understood to have arisen when individuals moved to new locations.
A derivative work from
"Digging into Archaeology:A Brief OER Introduction to Archaeology with Activities" by Amanda Wolcott Paskey and AnnMarie Beasley Cisneros, Faculty (Anthropology) at Cosumnes River College & American River College, ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative (OERI), 2020, under CC BY-NC 4.0.
