Cauldrons of Bronze Age nomads reveals 2700 year old yak milk and the deep antiquity of food preparation techniques
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Bayarsaikhan, Jamsranjav
Ganbold, Ankhsanaa
Batsuuri, Ankhbayar
Ishtseren, Lochin
Nakamura, Daisuke
Eregzen, Gelegdorj
Ventresca-Miller, Alicia
Miller, Bryan K
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Cauldrons, vessels that are simultaneously common and enigmatic, offer insights into past cultural and social traditions. While assumed to possess a special function, what these cauldrons contained is still largely mysterious. These vessels, such as those made from bronze or copper alloys, function as reservoirs for ancient organics through the antibacterial qualities provided by the metal surfaces. Here we show, through protein analysis, that cauldrons from the Final Bronze Age (ca. 2700 BP) were primarily used to collect blood from ruminants, primarily caprines, likely for the production of sausages in a manner similar to contemporary practices in Mongolia's rural countryside. Our findings present a different function from the recent findings of cooked meat in copper-alloy vessels from the northern Caucasus 2000 years earlier, exposing the diversity in food preparation techniques. Our secondary findings of bovine milk within the cauldron, including peptides specific to Bos mutus, pushes back their regional domestication into the Bronze Age.
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Scientific Reports
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14
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© The Author(s) 2024. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Archaeology
Archaeological science
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Wilkin, S; Bayarsaikhan, J; Ganbold, A; Batsuuri, A; Ishtseren, L; Nakamura, D; Eregzen, G; Ventresca-Miller, A; Miller, BK, Cauldrons of Bronze Age nomads reveals 2700 year old yak milk and the deep antiquity of food preparation techniques, Scientific Reports, 2024, 14, pp. 11625