Tropical rainforests are complex and varied environments found around the globe in tropical and subtropical regions. They hold a large biodiversity but also present multiple challenges, both for their human occupations and archaeological studies. In recent decades, we have learned that our ancestors lived in these environments much earlier than we thought and continuously over tens of thousands of years. Using stable isotope analyses, we hope to better understand how hunter-gatherers lived there in the past and if they perhaps gradually started using them differently before the introduction of agriculture.
Tropical rainforests are complex and varied environments found around the globe in tropical and subtropical regions. They hold a large biodiversity but also present multiple challenges, both for their human occupations and archaeological studies. In recent decades, we have learned that our ancestors lived in these environments much earlier than we thought and continuously over tens of thousands of years. Using stable isotope analyses, we hope to better understand how hunter-gatherers lived there in the past and if they perhaps gradually started using them differently before the introduction of agriculture.
Urbanization, forestry, and agriculture are readily associated with contemporary human land use, but how we use the land around us has changed greatly through our species' long history. The availability of food, seasonality, or the concentration of a particularly abundant rich food source are all examples of concerns that prehistoric populations would have faced, all of which would have been managed through land use strategies.
Directly and systematically assessing how past populations utilized their ecosystems, especially as far back as the Pleistocene, remains particularly challenging because pre-urban hunter-gatherer societies may not have left us with large-scale or significant traces. However, such studies are important to identify and assess drivers of long-term land changes and dynamics and to provide baselines for subsequent changes.
Dr. Nicolas Bourgon is carrying out zinc isotope analyses using a multi-collector mass spectrometer with inductively coupled plasma (MC-ICP-MS). The isotope analysis is carried out on fossil tooth enamel samples dissolved in acid from which the element zinc was previously separated using ion chromatography. The results obtained can help us distinguish between diets that rely more heavily on plants or meat, for example.
Dr. Nicolas Bourgon is carrying out zinc isotope analyses using a multi-collector mass spectrometer with inductively coupled plasma (MC-ICP-MS). The isotope analysis is carried out on fossil tooth enamel samples dissolved in acid from which the element zinc was previously separated using ion chromatography. The results obtained can help us distinguish between diets that rely more heavily on plants or meat, for example.
Using a systematic comparison of multi-isotopic data of δ66Zn, δ13C, and δ18O, we seek to quantify hunter-gatherers' dietary reliance on different resource types (e.g., plant, animal, and aquatic). Although the choice of food consumed may not have left visible traces in the landscape or the archeological records, these geochemical tracers can help us explore whether gradual dietary transitions were already underway even before the introduction of agriculture or animal husbandry.
This project is co-funded by an ongoing Walter Benjamin funding program of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, with the project specifically looking into omnivory and how zinc isotopes can help us detect this dietary behaviour. This project is also being conducted in collaboration with the Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (Berlin, Germany), the University of Sri Jayewardenepura (Gangodawila, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka), and the Australian National University (Canberra, Australia).
Long-distance trade of commodities played a major role in forming political structures and transferring socio-cultural practices among the major centres of ancient civilization in the Old World. Some of the most high-value products that moved along ancient trade routes, were not substantive, calorie-laden foods, but resins, powders, extracts, and obscure dried plant components that nonetheless packed substantial flavour and aroma. Not only did these substances possess the ability to transform cuisines and to scent people and spaces, they also often played significant roles in economic, cultural, medicinal and ritual contexts.
This project maps forest cover loss, alongside the forms of political resistance that have obstructed deforestation, during the era of global capitalist expansion from the late 1400s onwards.
The interdisciplinary ERC-funded LastJourney project investigates late Pleistocene - early Holocene (LP-EH) human settlement, adaptation, and ecological impact across the varied landscapes of northwest South America in order to better understand how our species interacted with, and shaped, the continent’s rich environmental diversity.
Our research produces novel historical and paleo-environmental data via the Radiocarbon and the Compound Specific Isotopic Analysis laboratories. The latter is under a joint directorship with the Biochemistry research group and the former is part of a collaboration with the AMS laboratory of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry. Isotopes are an eclectic research tool used to set chronologies and to investigate past human living conditions, economic activities, exchange networks, technological developments, and paleo-environmental and -climatic conditions.
With publishing the Climate Action Plan in March 2024, the MPG set itself the goal of becoming climate-neutral by 2035 and proclaimed to design a pathway towards being a leading example for a sustainable and climate-friendly research organization. This project takes this goal as a starting point for an analysis of the entire climate, biodiversity…
