Mélanie Roffet-Salque (Organic Geochemistry Unit, School of Chemistry, University of Bristol) will present a seminar entitled “Pottery, parchment and sheep – using the stable hydrogen isotope composition of animal fats to build well-dated local climate archives” january 23rd room 1129 at LSCE.

Scroll of parchment, UK Rolls of Parliament, The National Archives
Abstract: Archaeological pottery is a source of organic matter, particularly fatty acids derived from the cooking of animal products by past communities. We drew an analogy between plant-derived alkanes preserved in sediments and animal fatty acids preserved in pottery. Their 2H isotopic analysis would enable us to build local climate archives (in the place where the populations lived) that are well dated (fatty acids can be dated by 14C). After testing this hypothesis on the archaeological site of Çatalhöyük, I will discuss how we validate this proxy using well-dated historical animal fats from parchments, animal skins rich in animal fats. In collaboration with The National Archives (UK), we have developed a method for extracting lipids from historical parchments and worked on the UK Acts of Parliament. Finally, I’d like to present our work on the origin of the isotopic signal in ruminants, with experiments on ewe feeding using an isotopic tracer. Pottery, parchment and sheep!
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To get the visio link: emmanuelle.casanova[a]lsce.ipsl.fr