Exploring East Eurasian food traditions through the window of pottery lipid residues

Talk at Globe Institute by Shinya Shoda, Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Japan.

Abstract

Recent breakthroughs in molecular biological methods and their application to archaeology have revealed various new facts about prehistoric diets and foodways that were not even imaginable in the previous century. Among them, pottery lipid residues have provided new insights into ancient cuisine in different parts of the world, making use of its abundance in archaeological sites. In this talk, I will present the regional aspects of diet and culinary traditions in prehistoric East and Central Asia that are becoming clearer, based on case studies of lipid residue analysis that the presenter and colleagues have carried out.

Shinya Shoda, Head of International Cooperation Section, Department of Planning and Coordination, Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, is an archaeologist with broad knowledge of the East Eurasian area, especially Japan and Korea. He is also an expert in lipid residue analysis of pottery.

He is a founding co-editor of the Archaeology of Food and Foodways journal. From 2014 to 2016, he was based in BioArCh in the Department of Archaeology at the University of York as a Marie Curie Incoming Fellow, where he is currently affiliated as an Honorary Visiting Fellow. In York, he trained to expertise in pottery lipid residue analysis and stable isotope analysis, which he now applies broadly to East and Central Asian materials.