Traditional foodways: Innovation, resilience and continuity in the ancient Mexican Highlands

Información del proyecto

TIRECUA

Identificador del acuerdo de subvención: 101108833

DOI

10.3030/101108833

Proyecto finalizado el 31 Enero 2025

Fecha de la firma de la CE 18 Abril 2023

Fecha de inicio 1 Septiembre 2023

Fecha de finalización 31 Agosto 2025

Financiado con arreglo a

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

Coste total

Sin datos

Aportación de la UE

€ 211 754,88

Coordinado por

UNIVERSITE DE BORDEAUX
France

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - TIRECUA (Traditional foodways: Innovation, resilience and continuity in the ancient Mexican Highlands)

Período documentado: 2023-09-01 hasta 2025-08-31

Resumen del contexto y de los objetivos generales del proyecto

Food is a highly multidimensional character that includes biological necessities, environmental constraints and the translation of a given socio-cultural context. TIRECUA focused on the study of the diet of past populations in Western Mexico and its consequences on the present population. This project built upon recent developments in bioarchaeological technics to advance the state-of-the-arts in the study of ancient foodways. This work has been primarily conducted at the University of Bordeaux (Host Institution, here after UBx) between the PACEA laboratory and the CBMN laboratory. A six-months secondment has been carried-out at the MNHN, Paris.

Trabajo realizado desde el comienzo del proyecto hasta el final del período abarcado por el informe y los principales resultados hasta la fecha

The first research objective of TIRECUA was to reconstruct the diet of the people that inhabited the Basin of Zacapu (BoZ) in the past, between the 2nd and the 15th century (c.). As some of the collections that were planned for the study were moved unexpectidly, the project opened to the colonial transition in the BoZ which slightly changed the considered chronology to the 7th – 17th c. The plan was to perform stable isotopes, proteomics and genomics to reconstruct diet. Yet, the project was conducted on a shorter duration than initially planned (17 months instead of 24 months) and therefore it focused on the stable isotopes analyses and on setting-up protocols for proteomics and genomics.
The overarching goal of TIRECUA was to integrate the data related to diet reconstruction and the population characterisation to better understand the patterns of innovation, resilience and continuity in food consumption in the BoZ.

TIRECUA also had several training objectives and transfer of knowledge objectives that were fulfilled: Developing cutting-edge skills and extending the fellow's competences in biomolecular anthropology, improving the fellow's teaching experience, expanding Host Institution expertise to new research areas and developing new analytical approaches at Host Institution.

Overall, TIRECUA has focused on the development of a protocol of combined biomolecular analysis from a single archaeological human tooth, made of (1) serial sampling of the dentine for stable isotopes, (2) palaeoproteomic sex identification from the enamel and (3) potential analysis of the dental calculus (ancient DNA, proteomics) if present on the tooth. Genomic data were already obtained from some of the teeth analysed here.

Avances que van más allá del estado de la técnica e impacto potencial esperado (incluida la repercusión socioeconómica y las implicaciones sociales más amplias del proyecto hasta la fecha)

The project has focused on stable isotopes, with the integration of the results from the zooarchaeological analysis. It shows 1) a food isotopic signal that becomes more homogeneous from the 7th-9th c. to the 13th c.; and 2) a shift toward european domestic animals during the 16th c. The other protocols have been developped on the analytical platforms of Host Insititution and will be available for future projects.

More precisely, the conbined use of teeth and bone remains from the same individuals allowed to identify slices of life going from birth to death with an approximation to weaning ages, childhood diet and transition to adulthood diet. It is the first time this kind of analysis has been applied for Mesoamerican samples and a research paper summarising these results will be submitted soon.

Skull from one of the archaeological individuals analysed here. Credit: Barrientos / Uacusecha