Secrets of the Stone Age’s dirty dishes...
Leftovers help archaeologists to date pottery
FAILING to wash the dishes properly does not go down well in most households.
But the fact our Stone Age ancestors left their pots dirty with food leftovers is proving invaluable to archaeologists.
They say it enables them to carry out highly accurate dating based on chemical changes in the fat deposits from food.
Traces of food left on Neolithic pottery dug up in Shoreditch, east London, allowed scientists to put a date of around 3,600BC on them – something that was impossible before. The results are accurate to within a human lifespan – around 70 years.
The pots were left behind by some of London’s earliest East Enders, who were farmers who feasted on goat, beef, lamb and dairy products. Experts hailed the trove as extraordinary. It comprises 436 fragments from at least 24 vessels weighing nearly 14lb in total.
Until now scientists have had to rely on dating organic matter inside pots or guess the age based on the design. But the new method has allowed them to date fatty acids from foods like milk and cheese.
Professor Richard Evershed, of Bristol University’s school of chemistry, said: ‘Being able to directly date archaeological pots is one of the holy grails of archaeology. This new method is now allowing the community to better understand key archaeological sites across the world. Archaeological questions that are currently very difficult to resolve could be answered.’
To prove the method worked the team looked at fat extracts from pottery up to 8,000 years old at sites in Britain, Europe and Africa which had already been given precise dates.
Professor Alex Bayliss, of Historic England, who undertook the analysis, said: ‘It is very difficult to overstate the importance of this advance to the archaeological community. The opportunity to place different kinds of pottery in calendar time much more securely will be of great practical significance.’
In Shoreditch, the new dating method has been used on what is thought to be the most significant group of early Neolithic pottery ever found in London.
The results indicate that around 5,600 years ago the area was used by early farmers.