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  5. Data from: Assessing the use of organic residue analysis to investigate plant oils in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean: An environmentally and archaeologically contextualized approach (Ph.D. dissertation by Rebecca F. Gerdes)

Data from: Assessing the use of organic residue analysis to investigate plant oils in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean: An environmentally and archaeologically contextualized approach (Ph.D. dissertation by Rebecca F. Gerdes)

File(s)
GCMS_Data_mzML2.zip (7.13 GB)
GCMS_Data_mzML1.zip (7.41 GB)
GCMS_Data_ggd2.zip (6.85 GB)
GCMS_Data_ggd1.zip (6.84 GB)
GCMS_Data_txt.zip (123.6 MB)
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Permanent Link(s)
https://doi.org/10.7298/vg43-f202
https://hdl.handle.net/1813/116996
Collections
Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies (CIAMS) Research Data
Department of Classics Research
Author
Gerdes, Rebecca F.
Wiandt, Hanna
Abuhashim, Malak
Williams, Avery
Childs, Bridget
Goldfarb, Jillian
Regenstein, Joe M.
Pilides, Despina
Manning, Sturt W.
Abstract

These files contain data along with associated output and instrumentation supporting all results reported in Gerdes 2024, "Assessing the use of organic residue analysis to investigate plant oils in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean: An environmentally and archaeologically contextualized approach." In the dissertation by Gerdes (2024), we found: The ways people store food and other products are intertwined with their social, political, and economic context. Reconstructing storage activities is thus an important archaeological research aim. Organic residue analysis (ORA) of lipids, the study of trace fats, oils, and similar substances preserved in the pores of pottery, can provide direct evidence for pottery use, yet ORA has often been misunderstood and overinterpreted in Mediterranean archaeology. This dissertation proposes an archaeologically and environmentally contextualized approach to better incorporate ORA into Mediterranean archaeology. A “relational assemblage” theoretical framework opens the “black box” of ORA and incorporate residues into archaeological interpretation by viewing residues as part of a “molecular scale” of the archaeological assemblage and by considering all the processes that might shape residues, including archaeologists’ interventions. A reevaluation of a 30-year-old hypothesis that olive oil storage played a role in the changing sociopolitics of early urban cities in Late Bronze Age (LBA) Cyprus (1600-1150 BCE) with this contextualized approach showed that the flaws in the ORA evidence used to argue for the storage of olive oil in monumental storerooms at Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios (K-AD). A novel long-term degradation experiment showed that calcareous soil contexts, which are common in the eastern and southern Mediterranean, lead to poorer preservation of plant oils in ceramics and partial preservation of plant oil biomarkers compared to a mildly acidic soil. A new ORA study of sherds from several buildings at K-AD and an inland site, Ampelia, suggested that some (but not necessarily all) pithoi from K-AD might have contained a plant oil, but also raise the possibility that residues reflected soil contamination. The results raise new questions about the roles of storage and of plant oils in the economy and politics of LBA Cyprus. The comprehensive, contextualized approach applied in this dissertation showed how organic residues and their interpretations in archaeological narrative emerge from a wide range of contingencies, from people’s uses of pottery in the past and climatic and environmental processes where pottery is buried to the analytical interventions of archaeologists.

Description
Please cite as: Gerdes, Rebecca F., Hanna Wiandt, Malak Abuhashim, Avery Williams, Bridget Childs, Jillian Goldfarb, Joe M. Regenstein, Despina Pilides, and Sturt W. Manning (2025) Data from: Assessing the use of organic residue analysis to investigate plant oils in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean: An environmentally and archaeologically contextualized approach (Ph.D. dissertation by Rebecca F. Gerdes). [dataset] Cornell University eCommons Repository. https://doi.org/10.7298/vg43-f202
Sponsorship
This research was supported by an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Award BSC-2032037, a Research Grant from the Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies (CIAMS, 2018), and support from the Cyprus Institute (Nicosia, Cyprus), and made use of the facilities of the Cornell Center for Materials Research, which are supported by NSF Award Number DMR-1719875. R.F.G. was supported by Sage Fellowships [years] and a Research Travel Grant (2022) from the Graduate School of Cornell University, the Florence May Smith Fellowship and Lane Cooper Fellowship as well as research travel awards from the Department of Classics at Cornell University, two International Research Travel Awards from the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies (Cornell University), a Graduate Research Fellowship from the Institute for European Studies (Cornell University), and Hirsch Travel and Research Grants from CIAMS. M. A. was supported by the Engineering Learning Initiatives program (2022). A. W. was supported by a fieldwork participation scholarship from the American Society of Overseas Research (2022). The archaeological samples were exported and analyzed under a permit from the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus. The authors would also like to thank Alison South and Kevin Fisher, former and current director of excavations at Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios, respectively, and Despina Pilides, director of excavations at Agios Sozomenos Ampelia, for the archaeological samples included in the dataset.
Date Issued
2025
Related Publication(s)
Gerdes, R. F. (2024). Assessing the use of organic residue analysis to investigate plant oils in the late bronze age eastern mediterranean: An environmentally and archaeologically contextualized approach. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (3069188872). https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/assessing-use-organic-residue-analysis/docview/3069188872/se-2
Link(s) to Related Publication(s)
https://doi.org/10.7298/7hge-z013
Rights
Attribution 4.0 International
Rights URI
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Type
dataset
Accessibility Hazard
none

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