The effect of charring and burial on the biochemical composition of cereal grains: investigating the integrity of archaeological plant material

Stable isotope analysis of charred archaeobotanical cereal grains has the potential to provide direct evidence of crop growing conditions in the past and to refine palaeodietary predictions. If isotope values of archaeobotanical material are to be considered robust, it is necessary to characterise the compositional changes associated with their charring and burial. This study used a suite of analytical techniques, including FT-IR and solid state ¹³C NMR, to characterise changes in the biochemical composition of modern einkorn grains with heating at 230 °C for 2 h, 4 h, 8 h and 24 h, encompassing conditions that replicate their undistorted ancient counterparts. The biochemical composition of archaeobotanical charred einkorn grains was also investigated by FT-IR and solid state ¹³C NMR in order to assess the changes in composition which occur during burial. Results of FT-IR and solid-state ¹³C NMR show that heating of modern einkorn grains resulted in Maillard reactions between cereal proteins and starch, forming high molecular weight melanoidins, which contain both alkyl and aromatic carbon. Loss of low molecular weight carbon and nitrogen-containing volatiles resulted in a slight but non-systematic increase in the δ¹³C values and a systematic increase of 0.8‰ in the δ¹⁵N values of the charred einkorn grains. Solid-state ¹³C NMR shows that the ancient charred einkorn grains consisted entirely of aromatic carbon and retained a similar proportion of nitrogen to their modern 24 h charred counterparts, despite a significantly lower concentration of amino acids. This indicates that the amino acid nitrogen in the ancient charred grains was retained in the stable melanoidins whose polymeric structure makes them resistant to subsequent degradation.     

Journeys to Italian East Africa 1936–1941: narratives of settlement

During the 1930s a huge amount of writing was produced on Italy's imperial activities and colonial possessions. The article centres on the written accounts of journeys to the empire which were made in the wake of its conquest.These texts were written by influential correspondents of the time; by writers of colonial literature; by Fascist ideologues and by occasional, though highly curious, visitors to the empire. All these official and semi-official commentators participated in the rapid settlement of East Africa specifically as observers. The article isolates the different narratives which run through each of the many travel texts: the transition from military to civilian rule,the population of a supposedly empty land surface; the implementation of an empire of work; the translation of Italian culture from the mainland to the colony. It explores the relationship between these paradigmatic narratives of settlement and shows how the vision offered by the travel accounts converged with the institutions and practices of the new empire. The article concludes by analysing the subject positions adopted by Italian men and women within the system of Fascist imperial discourses and some of the ways in which the indigenous population was represented within different narratives of settlement.