Ancient Recipes Revealed: FTIR Analysis of Central Plains Tradition Pottery

Our goals in this limited trial were several:
1) to evaluate the feasibility of using FTIR to identify Central Plains tradition food preparation practices
2) to determine if it is possible to differentiate uses of Central Plains tradition jars
3) to make a preliminary determination of what those uses were and what food items might have been combined as recipes for meals
4) to get a preliminary answer to the burning question of how the seed bowls were used
Identifying individual ingredients to build recipes is very much the task of identifying as many of the foods cooked in each vessel as possible through examining the chemical signature of the residue that soaked into the fabric of the sherds. Recipes revealed during this preliminary analysis focus on combinations of sunflower meal and/or oil, fish, rabbit, maize and squash. Combinations of sunflower seed oil, meat (either rabbit or fish) and squash are likely, as these ingredients are matched repeatedly. Ceramic vessels were not single use household items, much like our cooking vessels today are not single use. For all of the "high-tech" methods use, we are examining people's habits and daily lives. Cooking is an expression of familial and larger relationships.