The development and application of peptide mass fingerprinting in archaeological assemblages (also known as Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry, or ZooMS) has led to numerous research projects and international collaborations over the past decade. These have broad chronological range and geographical spread and a wide scope. The use of ZooMS offers obvious advantages to the traditional zooarchaeological or more sophisticated genetic approaches. It is a fast, cheap and therefore a widely applicable methodology that requires minimum setup for sample preparation.

Contrasted with its potential, the technique has so far been only applied in a handful of laboratories and little effort has been made to systematize the preparative protocols and the way results are communicated, managed and archived.

With this 1^st meeting we aim to bring together experts who intend to develop and/or apply ZooMS, at a current or new facility. We want to integrate past experience with present knowledge and with the increasing number of studies using the method in archaeology, cultural heritage, ecology and conservation. Ultimately we want to create an International Network for ZooMS (IN-ZooMS), designed to encourage knowledge transfer between facilities and countries, foster open-access principles and create a platform for discussing best practices, eventually allowing synergies, across-lab collaborations and joint funding opportunities.

Program

Introduction

1. Matthew Collins (13:00-13:15): Welcome & History of ZooMS development, projects undertaken at the Universities of York and Copenhagen

2. Katerina Douka (13:15-13:30): The IN-ZooMS initiative & summary of research projects undertaken at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the University of Oxford.

Meeting points

3. Sampling approaches & preparative protocols

4. Data interpretation and current methods of analyses

5. Open-access database and data archiving

6. New reference libraries

7. Inter-comparison exercises

8. Other information extracted from ZooMS results. Combination of ZooMS with other methodologies (C-14, aDNA)

9. Helpline, communication channels for users and developers

10. Ethics, outreach and collaborations (national and international institutions, governments, museum, schools, NGOs).