Last Meals: Recovering Abdominal Contents From Skeletonized Remains

Excavation and analysis of human remains is becoming a polarized field in anthropology; it is therefore necessary to consider alternate avenues of data collection from these features to maximize their potential. The analysis of abdominal soils for digestive tract contents is consistently overlooked in research designs. Two previous studies have attempted to recover abdominal contents through systematic sampling methods using multiple inhumations and two others have recovered colon contents in isolated instances. This research briefly familiarizes the reader with current state of investigation, and then proposes and tests a different method to recover abdominal contents in skeletonized inhumations. Using this method, more than 70% of the sampled inhumations yielded data on ingested botanical products. Though recovered, faunal remains were rare. The implications of recovery, some interpretations for each population, and avenues of future research are considered.