POttery Use from the earliest Records of Patagonia through biomolecular analysis

Informazioni relative al progetto

POUR

ID dell’accordo di sovvenzione: 101022577

DOI

10.3030/101022577

Progetto chiuso

Data della firma CE 16 Marzo 2021

Data di avvio 1 Maggio 2022

Data di completamento 30 Aprile 2024

Finanziato da

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Costo totale

€ 224 933,76

Contributo UE

€ 224 933,76

Coordinato da

UNIVERSITY OF YORK
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - POUR (POttery Use from the earliest Records of Patagonia through biomolecular analysis)

Periodo di rendicontazione: 2022-05-01 al 2024-04-30

Sintesi del contesto e degli obiettivi generali del progetto

Since its birth in East Asia during the Late Pleistocene, ceramic technology has become almost universal, allowing the exploitation of new environments and fostering different kinds of cultural expressions. This worldwide relevance for human development has positioned the use of early pottery as one of the most debated topics in archaeology.
Traditional models that linked this technological breakthrough to the development of farming and sedentary lifestyles are currently being revisited, and new data from the Northern Hemisphere suggest that it would have been a hunter-gatherer innovation widespread by the processing of aquatic resources during sporadic episodes. However, some key regions of the Southern Hemisphere have remained unexplored. This is the case of the southernmost limit of pottery dispersal in America, the Patagonia region, where pottery was spread by foragers over a vast and diverse environment for 2000 years, but it remained as a scarce and low-scale technology.
What was the initial motivation that drove Patagonian foragers to use and spread this technology without engaging in intensive production? Could the stability of aquatic resources trigger this process and delineate a worldwide trend that transcends the ecological and cultural settings? By studying sherds, POUR seeks to answer this unsolved question by implementing the first large-scale systematic research on the uses of early pottery in this part of the world.

Lavoro eseguito dall’inizio del progetto fino alla fine del periodo coperto dalla relazione e principali risultati finora ottenuti

POUR applied the latest biomolecular analysis on pottery sherds and data interpretation methods. We first took pottery powder samples from sherds across different Patagonian environments to apply chemical treatments to release lipids and other biomolecules that are preserved in their clay matrix. We then compared our samples with data from modern foodstuffs to be able to estimate the potential resources cooked or processed in the pots. Our results show that the early pottery in Patagonia is dominated by mixtures of plant oils and animal fats, being the aquatic resources the most infrequent. These results are also aligned with the overall wide spectrum of the Patagonian hunter-gatherer diet. Opening a new debate about its significance as a technological breakthrough, the spreading of pottery was not linked to the effective exploitation of one type of resource, and it did not radically change the overall Patagonian foodways.

Progressi oltre lo stato dell’arte e potenziale impatto previsto (incluso l’impatto socioeconomico e le implicazioni sociali più ampie del progetto fino ad ora)

Not applicable.

POUR_Summary