Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry Data used for "Identifying Palaeolithic birch tar production techniques: challenges from an experimental biomolecular approach"

This data set contains gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS) data of eight experimentally reproduced Palaeolithic birch bark tars. The intentional production of birch bark tar by European Neanderthals plays an important role in discussions about the technological and behavioural complexity of Pleistocene hominins. However, research is hampered because it is currently unknown how Neanderthals were producing birch tar. Organic biomarkers, identified with Gas Chromatograph-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS), provide a promising way to identify possible production processes. Analysis of this data is presented and discussed in a research article written by Kozowyk et al. in Scientific Reports 2023. The attached GC-MS data provides additional information on the chemical composition of experimental birch bark tars. The dataset is made up of 2 types of files: Raw GC-MS data in .zip files for each experiment (containing .acaml, .dx, .mfx, .bin, .rx, .pmx, .amx) which can be used for further analysis and post-processing, and a summary (.xlsx) file documenting the key biomarkers and peak retention times used in the publication and information about the tar samples. The summary GC-MS .xlsx file contains peaks automatically assigned by the software from the NIST database and may contain errors. Relevant peaks used in the manuscript have been manually checked and renamed where appropriate. Finally, all data used and produced for PCA is available as .csv files.

本数据集包含8份经实验复刻的旧石器时代桦树皮焦油的气相色谱-质谱联用（Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry，GC-MS）数据。欧洲尼安德特人主动炼制桦树皮焦油的行为，在探讨更新世古人类的技术与行为复杂性的研究中具有重要意义。然而，目前学界尚未明确尼安德特人炼制桦树皮焦油的具体方式，这一问题制约了相关研究的推进。借助GC-MS鉴定得到的有机生物标志物，为识别可能的炼制工艺提供了极具潜力的途径。Kozowyk等人于2023年发表在《Scientific Reports》的研究论文中，对本数据集的分析过程与结果进行了阐述与讨论。随附的GC-MS数据可提供实验制备桦树皮焦油的化学成分相关补充信息。本数据集包含两类文件：一是对应每个实验的原始GC-MS数据压缩包（.zip格式），内含.acaml、.dx、.mfx、.bin、.rx、.pmx、.amx格式文件，可用于后续分析与后处理；二是汇总文件（.xlsx格式），该文件记录了论文中使用的关键生物标志物、色谱峰保留时间，以及焦油样本的相关信息。该汇总.xlsx文件中的色谱峰由软件基于NIST数据库自动标注，可能存在标注误差。论文中使用的相关色谱峰已经过人工核查，并在必要时进行了重命名。最后，用于主成分分析（Principal Component Analysis，PCA）的全部原始与衍生数据均以.csv格式文件提供。