Identifying Archaeological Bone via Non-Destructive ZooMS and the Materiality of Symbolic Expression: Examples from Iroquoian Bone Points.

ABSTRACT: Today, practical, functional and symbolic choices inform the selection of raw materials for worked objects. In cases where we can discern the origin of worked bone, tooth, ivory and antler objects in the past, we assume that similar choices are being made. However, morphological species identification of worked objects is often impossible due to the loss of identifying characteristics during manufacture. Here, we describe a novel non-destructive ZooMS (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry) method which was applied to bone points from Pre-Contact St. Lawrence Iroquoian village sites in southern Quebec, Canada. The traditional ZooMS technique requires destructive analysis of a sample, which can be problematic when dealing with artefacts. Here we instead extracted proteins from the plastic bag

SUBMITTER: McGrath K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6667708 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature