Nourishing archaeology and science.

Archaeology is an interdisciplinary science par excellence. In its quest to reconstruct human behavior in the natural and cultural environment of the past, archaeology uses knowledge and techniques from many different academic disciplines. Indeed, there are very few sciences that have no relevance to archaeology. The concept of “holistic archaeology” was specifically defined as an inclusive approach to archaeology, comprising all aspects of human societies, from ecology and economy, to social organization and politics, to art and ideology (1). In many excavation projects, however, the term has been particularly used to refer to the integration in archaeology of the work and results of exact or beta scientists, and less so to the work of anthropologists or humanistic scholars (2). The integration of the exact sciences into archaeological research has been led by those studying prehistoric sites throughout the world. Perhaps one of the key reasons for this is the very limitation of the evidence supplied by scattered, nonliterate, prehistoric groups and societies. Until recently, the efforts of prehistorians to include scientific analysis left scholars working on the great ancient civilizations far behind. The very wealth of evidence available here, especially that derived from abundant ancient textual sources, has militated against the application of scientific analysis on the same scale as that used in prehistory. However, that application is rapidly changing, especially with the understanding that the texts do not tell the entire story. More and more analysis is being conducted by established teams of researchers using advanced techniques. In PNAS, Clark et al. (3) present the chemical composition of organic balms used to prepare meat mummies, offerings of food especially prepared for the dead. This work complements previous work on animal and human mummies from ancient Egypt (4, 5), and uses advanced organic chemistry to answer some of the higher-level archaeological research questions mentioned above. The production and preservation of food is fundamental to every society. Clark et al. (3) discuss the preservation of meat products, specifically that of birds and large mammals. Meat production could be broadly divided into two main categories: (i) the general production for routine consumption by either the population as a whole, or some elite subgroup of the population; and (ii) the production and preservation of meat products for ritual use. This second group could include meat for temple offerings and the victual mummies, designed to provide food for the dead [figure 1 in Clark et al. (3)]. As Clark et al. (3) state, the preservation of victual mummies sits at an interesting intersection between routine production and preservation of meat (which it resembles because it is a food product being preserved), and the much better known, studied, and much more widespread preservation of human and animal mummies (which have the ritual aspect, but not the food link). In Egypt, the problems of producing and preserving meats are exacerbated by two key factors: urban living and climate. From the beginning of the fourth millennium B.C.E., we see the formation of a single state in Egypt and the growth of urban living. By the time of the objects analyzed, the second half of the first millennium B.C.E., urban areas were large and relatively abundant. Therefore, food had to be prepared at a distance and brought into the population centers, necessitating some time delay. The climate in Egypt was very similar then to what it is now. The heat would mean that meat would have to be eaten very quickly before it became bad, which would happen in only a matter of hours. There is, therefore, an absolute necessity to preserve food—especially meat products—and fast, to prevent them from spoiling. Very little is known about how this preservation was done day to day for large ancient