A kitchen entrance to the aristocracy - analysis of lipid biomarkers in cultural layers

Abstract

In this paper the importance of meat and dairy products in the food culture of Germanic aristocracy is stressed. This forms the archaeological basis for the tracing of animal products in soils through the analysis of biomarkers, i.e. sterols and their corresponding 5a-stanols. These compounds were extracted from soil samples collected from cultural layer at Vendel, Vendel parish, Uppland, Sweden. The analysis was done by gas chromatography/mass pectrometry. Through Principal Component Analysis and Student's t-test of the data statistically significant differences could be shown between area of culinary and non-culinary character. These results
confirm the assumption that this method can be used as a means to classify archaeological soils, here from a food-cultural approach.