ISIS Neutron and Muon Source Data Journal

Nuancing ancient Maya cuisine through the non-invasive study of organic amorphous carbonized objects

Abstract: The non-destructive nature of neutron imaging and diffraction makes it a key technique to image archaeological materials. Our experiments focus on foods processed by the ancient Maya living in the Lowlands and the Mexican Highlands at Teotihuacan during the Classic period (AD 250-900), when significant socio-political changes caused by allochthonous migrations occurred. Imaging of millimetric amorphous carbonized objects (ACOs), the relics of complex food preparations and the food replicas (made using plants available to the ancient Maya), will provide new and never before published information on the ingredients used and the way in which foods were prepared. Our results will provide new data on ancient Maya cuisine, but also increase scholar?s awareness to the informative value of these often-overlooked materials, conduce to upgrading the pipeline from the field to the laboratory, and revising conservation protocols. The aim of this proposal is to use the tomograph IMAT at ISIS to reveal the presence of organic materials within these porosities, which might be invisible to X-rays.

Principal Investigator: Dr Clarissa Cagnato
Local Contact: Dr Sylvia Britto
Experimenter: Dr Antonella Scherillo
Experimenter: Dr Claudia Mondelli
Experimenter: Dr Giusi Sorrentino

DOI: 10.5286/ISIS.E.RB2510358

ISIS Experiment Number: RB2510358

Publisher: STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source

Data format: RAW/Nexus
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Data Citation

The recommended format for citing this dataset in a research publication is as:
[author], [date], [title], [publisher], [doi]

For Example:
Dr Clarissa Cagnato et al; (2025): Nuancing ancient Maya cuisine through the non-invasive study of organic amorphous carbonized objects , STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.RB2510358

Data is released under the CC-BY-4.0 license.