TY  - JOUR
A1  - Dunne, Julie
A1  - Höhn, Alexa
A1  - Franke, Gabriele
A1  - Neumann, Katharina
A1  - Breunig, Peter
A1  - Gillard, Toby
A1  - Walton-Doyle, Caitlin
A1  - Evershed, Richard
T1  - Honey-collecting in prehistoric West Africa from 3500 years ago
T2  - Nature communications
N2  - Honey and other bee products were likely a sought-after foodstuff for much of human history, with direct chemical evidence for beeswax identified in prehistoric ceramic vessels from Europe, the Near East and Mediterranean North Africa, from the 7th millennium BC. Historical and ethnographic literature from across Africa suggests bee products, honey and larvae, had considerable importance both as a food source and in the making of honey-based drinks. Here, to investigate this, we carry out lipid residue analysis of 458 prehistoric pottery vessels from the Nok culture, Nigeria, West Africa, an area where early farmers and foragers co-existed. We report complex lipid distributions, comprising n-alkanes, n-alkanoic acids and fatty acyl wax esters, which provide direct chemical evidence of bee product exploitation and processing, likely including honey-collecting, in over one third of lipid-yielding Nok ceramic vessels. These findings highlight the probable importance of honey collecting in an early farming context, around 3500 years ago, in West Africa.
KW  - Analytical chemistry
KW  - Anthropology
KW  - Archaeology
Y1  - 2021
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/80810
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-808102
SN  - 2041-1723
N1  - The authors wish to thank NERC 771 (Reference: CC010) and NEIF (www.isotopesuk.org) for funding and maintenance of the instruments used for this work and Ian Bull, Alison Kuhl and Helen Whelton for technical help. We especially thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for the financial funding of this project (BR 1459/7 and NE 408/5) and the National Commission for Museums and Monuments in Nigeria for aiding us in conducting research on the Nok Culture and providing staff to assist in the fieldwork.
Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.
VL  - 12
IS  - art. 2227
SP  - 1
EP  - 11
PB  - Nature Publishing Group UK
CY  - [London]
ER  -