On Thu, 25 Sep 1997, Staffan Lindeberg wrote:

> At 08.58 97-09-24, Andrew Millard wrote:  >
> > They examined bone lipids to enhance our understanding of studies on
> > bone lipids from archaeological populations.
>
> How old may bones be for such methods to be applicable?

The oldest report is of 75000+-15000 years for whale bones, where the
integrity of the signal was verfied by comparison of cholesterol with
collagen.[1] Collagen survival is often taken as an indicator of general
organic survival in bones, and we have collagen from bones of 2-3 times
that age, so we may be reasonably confident of going back 200,000 years
and in principle further.  However, survival of organic matter in bones
varies from site to site and become rarer the further back one goes.
Actually making useful statements about real diets will require a lot more
work, and that the diet under consideration had isotopically
distinguishable parts.  That last caveat is particularly appropriate in
Europe, where there are plants of only one photosynthetic pathway, so that
apart from the terrestrial/marine divide there are only subtle differences
in isotopic content of foods.

[1] Stott, AW, Evershed, RP, Tuross, N (1997) Compound-specific approach
to the delta C-13 analysis of cholesterol in fossil bones Organic
Geochemistry 26 (1-2) 99-103

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 Dr. Andrew Millard                              [log in to unmask]
 Department of Archaeology, University of Durham,   Tel: +44 191 374 4757
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