Laboratory detective work involving animal fat and plant oil residues on ceramics has helped researchers shed fascinating light on societies that existed thousands of years ago in what is now the UAE.
Dairy products may have been included in the diet of residents of Hili 8, part of the Hili complex of archaeological sites in Al Ain, a Bronze Age area dating to the third millennium BC.
Researchers carried out complex laboratory analysis of lipid (fat and oil) samples on pottery to draw their conclusions.
Dr Akshyeta Suryanarayan, the lead author of a new study detailing the findings, said the investigations identified animal fats in most vessels, highlighting “the importance of the pastoral economy at Hili 8”.
Previous work has shown that most animal remains at the site were from domestic creatures such as cattle, sheep or goats, while residents also kept dogs.
The latest findings “fit well” with this evidence and show “the role that meat and/or milk played in the domestic life of the site’s inhabitants”.
“Analyses are currently continuing that will help detect if dairy products were in the vessels, which will provide more insight into how the animal economy was managed,” said Dr Suryanarayan, who is part of a team of researchers from the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Nice, Rennes and Nanterre who carried out the work.
In an arid environment like the UAE, a dairy economy — which typically requires animals to have access to abundant water supplies — would have been difficult to sustain, so it is possible, but not yet confirmed, that dairy products were imported.
Further analysis of samples is unlikely to determine where animal fats came from, as there is no “geographic signature”, as Dr Suryanarayan describes it, to pinpoint their origins.
“It will also be interesting to compare these results with pottery from sites along the coast where fish and aquatic products played a bigger role in the diet,” Dr Suryanarayan said.
The results are detailed in a paper, Foodstuffs and Organic Products in Ancient South-East Arabia, co-written with three other researchers from Cote d'Azur University and the French National Centre for Scientific Research, and published in Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies.
To identify what the lipid samples consisted of, researchers used a chemical technique called gas chromatography mass spectrometry, which involves separating out chemical components and determining what they are by looking at their mass.
Gas chromatography mass spectrometry is used for a variety of other purposes, ranging from developing pharmaceuticals to drug testing athletes’ urine samples.