A dung debate?
I never imagined I would end up being a specialist on the subject of archaeological poop, but there you go. Coprolites, animal dung, palaeofaeces you name it. So I was very intrigued by an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last week, claiming evidence for the earliest use of manure by European farmers 8000 years ago . Firstly let's consider the different methods that we can use to identify dung in the archaeological record. These can be divided into direct and indirect methods. The former include definitive evidence for the presence of dung, that is actual dung pellets, or lipid biomarkers which are found exclusively in dung (i.e. faecal sterols and bile acids from the gut). The latter include evidence which is suggestive of dung, for example weed seed assemblages. Although indirect indicators are often the only thing available in archaeology, in my opinion one cannot make definitive statements based on indirect evidence. The best we can do...