by Matthew Law 

Food is one of the most basic of human needs, and so the types of food eaten by different populations in the past, often called palaeodiet, are of great interest to archaeologists seeking to understand differences between populations, and the structure of past economies. There are a number of different methods for investigating palaeodiet, including

• Analysis of faunal remains, such as animal bone or shell
• Archaeobotanical remains, such as seeds and fruit
• Artefacts relating to food preparation, such as quern stones
• Artefacts relating to food acquisition, such as flint arrowheads and other lithics
• Buildings, for housing animals or food storage
• Organic residues, for example on pots or lithics
• Human remains, through skeletal characteristics, or coprolites and other faecal residues, or food remains associated with preserved bodies.
• Ecological modelling , such as mapping local food sources
• Comparative zoological models, especially non-human primates in similar environments. Non-human primates are also useful indicators of what might be possible - for example if bonobos can exploit tubers, it is likely early hominids could as well.
• Where a built structure is suspected of involvement in stabling, soil micromorphology could be applied to identify its use. This may reveal evidence of trampling by livestock, or of dung (for example through chemical signatures such as increased phosphate levels; or the presence of coprostanols, which are fatty lipid materials found in dung).

Potential problems 

There are numerous problems confronting the archaeologist who wishes to reconstruct palaeodiet. Some foods simply leave no trace in the archaeological record for example (Gordon Hillman called these 'silent foods'). With regard to ecological modelling, some plant communities that exist in particular environments today may not have existed in the same types of environment in the past. Also, some of the food sources in a particular ecosystem are only available at particular times of the year. Archaeobotany presents a special problem as most plant remains are only preserved by certain conditions or processes, most commonly charring, although only certain types of plant will have been burnt for food (therefore there may be a lot of other plants eaten raw that are 'silent foods'). Furthermore, some animal products (for example milk) do not require the killing of the animal, which might affect the archaeological record. When analysing organic residues, contamination from residues within the soil is an important consideration. When extrapolating from other primates, it is important to remember that just like human, other primates have also been evolving for millions of years, and so may have evolved anatomical features or behaviours individually.

Palaeodiet and Human Remains

A number of different aspects of human or hominid remains can reveal information relating to palaeodiet:

• Functional morphology - the robust jaw and pronounced sagittal crest in robust species of Australopithecenes is thought to relate to the muscular requirements of their diet, while male Neanderthals are thought to be much larger than females because they are hunters.
• Dentition - the smaller canine teeth in more recent hominids allow for a greater degree of rotation (and therefore improved mastication), while enamel thickness on molar teeth has increased to allow more grinding.
• Palaeopathology - A number of dietary deficiencies affect the skeleton, such as scurvy (caused by a lack of vitamin C) and rickets (caused by a lack of vitamin D)
• Dental pathology - caries, which are commonly known as cavities, are caused by microbial activity in the mouth resulting from consumption of carbohydrates. Enamel hypoplasia can be caused by dietary deficiencies during childhood. Dental calculus, which is mineralised plaque, may include trapped food debris.
• Bone chemistry - Analysing the isotopes within bone can help assess diet. Different plant species have different preferences during photosynthesis. Some, known as C4 plants, like to take up chains of four molecules of carbon, whereas C3 plants like to take up three chains of carbon. Plants in wet tropical and dry tropical environments tend to be C4 types, whereas temperate zones are usually favoured by C3 types. For example maize (Zea mays L), being a tropical plant in origin, is a C4 species. There is more Carbon-13 (¹³C) in C4 plants than there is in C3 plants, so people who eat more C4 plants will have relatively more ¹³C in their bones. In marine environments nitrogen isotopes are often examined, because organisms higher up the food chain usually have an increased ratio of ¹⁵N: ¹⁴N, which is reflected in the bone collagen of people eating different types of marine food.

Return to Contents