Abstract
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. To investigate this, we carried 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. Complex lipid distributions, comprising n-alkanes, n-alkanoic acids and fatty acyl wax esters, 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 likely importance of honey collecting in an early farming context, around 3500 years ago, in West Africa.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 2227 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Nature Communications |
Volume | 12 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 14 Apr 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information: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.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s).
Keywords
- analytical chemistry
- anthropology
- archaeology