Bone Powder Detected on Neolithic Pottery From China

Archaeology News ^ | January 16, 2025 | editors / unattributed

[SunkenCiv]

According to a Phys.org report, archaeologist Xingtao Wei of Zhengzhou University and his colleagues analyzed residues preserved on three 8,000-year-old pottery tripods recovered from Xielaozhuang, a site in northern China belonging to the Peiligang culture. The researchers were examining the pottery with scanning electron microscopy to study how alcohol was made when they detected the crusty residues. Additional testing with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, and analysis of starch granules revealed that the residues contained compounds and minerals typically found in bone. They also detected traces of wild plants, including acorns and adlay millet. Wei and his colleagues suggest that extracting nutrients from the bones of animals may have been a survival strategy employed by the members of the Peiligang culture during the transition from hunting and gathering to farming.

[SunkenCiv]

Pottery tripods from China's Xielaozhuang site

Wei et al. 2024, International Journal of Osteoarchaeology

[SunkenCiv]

[ProtectOurFreedom]

I’ll go out on a limb here and say they used Holstein bones.

[Bob434]

i worked on an old old inn, used to be an old stagecoach stopover inn, and out in the shed, upstairs, was a bone grinding machine- lots of bone fragments, knuckles etc lying near the machine-

‘likely’ they used it for garden fertilizer, grinding up the bones of pigs, chickens, ducks, rabbits etc- but always wondered why it was located in an upper shed area out of sight lol-

[gundog]

Bone fragments are used in the color case-hardening of steel.

[Bob434]

is that different from bluing?

[gundog]

Yes. Steel is heated in the presence of bone and charcoals of various woods, and the absence of oxygen.

[Bob434]

thanks, interesting process- I use to work with Gold- and after heating it, it would become softer, but after working it a bit, it would harden, had to keep going back and forth depending on how much work was being done to it- would use borax as a flux- from what i understood, heating would align the molecules, making the metal softer- working the metal would deform them, causing the metal to get harder-

i wonder what the lack of oxygen does to the metal in the hardening process-

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Bone broth.

Ancient Chinese secret!

Soup and bread are two of the things humans tend to make all over the world.

The third thing is alcohol.

Alcohol for the party, soup and bread to recover afterwards. :)

[gundog]

Probably just keeps the charcoal and bone from combusting. Ever made char cloth? You put cotton fabric in an airtight container, and subject it to high temperatures. What comes out is a useful fire-starting material.

[Red Badger]

So that’s where ‘Bone China’ comes from!......................

[Bob434]

Yes I have made charcloth- we used to carry a fire kit when hunting (also carried lighters, but they were not always reliable). Made our own charcloth- I used to make primitive things like arrow heads, knives from a local glass-like material (kinda like obsidian, but man made), bows, arrows, etc. We didn’t go quite to the extent that reenactors would go, but we did do some of the old “primitive” prep stuff like that. I had a huge chunk of flint from the cliffs of dover- white on the outside, black as coal inside. Still have it. Made the striker out of carbon steel file- worked pretty good.

The cloth would ca5ch the spark pretty well, even in high winds. Carried small bundle of tinder too.

[SunkenCiv]

It’s high time we boned China. :^)