Madeleine Bleasdale

Proteomic Evidence of Dairy Consumption in Neolithic Sudan

Madeleine Bleasdale§, Jocelyne Desideri#, Marie Bessie#, Franziska Irmer§, Paolo Nanni£, Christian Trachsel£, Shevan Wilkin§, Muhammad Zahir§, Nicole Boivin§, Jessica Hendy§.

§ Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany; # University of Geneva laboratory of prehistoric archaeology and anthropology, Geneva, Switzerland; £ Functional Genomics Centre Zurich, University of Zurich, Switzerland

Animal milk has been an important food source for humans in various regions of Africa for millennia but many questions remain about the origins and spread of its consumption, as well as which animal species where utilised. This paper investigates patterns of milk consumption in Sudan during the Neolithic and Kerma periods through the proteomic analysis of ancient dental calculus. The identification of the milk protein beta-lactoglobulin (BLG) provides the first direct evidence for dairy consumption in northern Africa and contributes new evidence at the individual-level for milk consumption in the Nile Valley. These findings also explore new limits for dietary protein preservation in ancient dental calculus and the application of proteomics to archaeological materials from hot, dry climates.