Dental plaque puts sea bream on Osaka tables as Sardis yields a face-down marble figure
Dental plaque from eight Osaka adults preserved proteins from sea bream and other foods. At Sardis, a marble figure dated to about 470 BCE emerged face-down as paving in a Roman avenue.
Science··Evening
Dental plaque preserves 17 taxa from Osaka commoners' tables
A study published in Anthropological Science used palaeoproteomics to examine dental plaque from eight adults buried in the Umeda cemetery. Researchers identified 38 dietary proteins from 17 taxa; nine came from fish. Proteins from red sea bream, described in historical sources as a luxury food, appeared in six of the eight people. The Sokendai team considered the plaque proteins alongside stable isotope ratios from bone collagen. The findings make commoners' access to seafood in premodern Osaka visible at the level of individual food taxa.[1]
Cold-water fish point toward long-distance trade
Alongside flatfish, the plaque contained proteins from imported cold-water species that do not occur naturally in Osaka Bay. Proteins from terrestrial mammals fit historical accounts of meat being eaten as medicinal food despite formal prohibitions. A cottonseed finding also suggests that the inedible seed may have been processed and consumed as oil. The authors draw a clear boundary around the scope: the eight people examined are a tiny fraction of the thousands of skeletons at Umeda. This dietary variety cannot be generalized to a wider population without comparisons across other social groups, cities and periods.[1]
The Sardis statue lay face-down in a Roman avenue
At Sardis in western Türkiye, excavators found a larger-than-life marble statue in the paving of a Roman colonnaded avenue. Broken into two large pieces, it had been turned face-down and reused as paving stone. It stands over 2.1 metres; anatomical details place the work at roughly 470 to 450 BCE. The pieces were found in late May and lifted on 13 July. Field director Nicholas Cahill says the sculptor knew contemporary Mediterranean and Anatolian styles while giving the figure clothes from about a century earlier. The statue's original setting and the identity of the person it represented remain unknown.[2]
