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Data supporting PhD thesis, "What's cooking in the Indus Civilisation? Investigating Indus food through ceramic lipid residue analysis"


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Authors

Suryanarayan, Akshyeta  ORCID logo  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8739-5647

Description

These data files supplement the analyses conducted as part of my PhD research entitled 'What’s cooking in the Indus Civilisation? Investigating Indus food through ceramic lipid residue analysis' (2019).This thesis investigates which products were processed in ceramic vessels used by populations of the Indus Civilisation, South Asia’s first urban civilisation. It examines vessel-usage in urban and rural Indus settlements located in northwest India during the urban period (c. 2600/2500–1900 B.C.), and identifies whether changes in vessel-use occurred in the post-urban period (c. 1900–1300 B.C.) by using lipid residue analysis. The following data has uploaded in the repository:

  1. Images of chromatograms obtained
  2. GC-c-IRMS data calibration and corrections
  3. Data files to run R code
  4. R code for all visualisations and statistical analyses (to be opened in R)

For original GC-MS data of lipid extracts from Indus vessels, please contact the author (files can only be opened with Agilent ChemStation or Masshunter software).

Version

Software / Usage instructions

R is required to run R code provided on R Markdown files. As Agilent Chemstation or Masshunter software is required to view the GC-MS data, images (.PNG) of the chromatograms are being provided for those without software access.

Keywords

Indus Civilisation, South Asia, lipid residues, vessel-use, urban, rural, foodways

Publisher

Sponsorship
My PhD research was possible with funding from Cambridge Trust and Nehru Trust for Cambridge University, Anthony Wilkin Trust, Smuts Trust, Sidney Sussex College and McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Parts of this research were carried out as part of the TwoRains project (http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/two-rains), which is funded by a Horizon 2020 European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant (H2020, 648609), and is based in the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge. TwoRains is being carried out in collaboration with Prof. Ravindra Nath Singh and the Department of AIHC and Archaeology at Banaras Hindu University. Some samples analysed in this thesis were also acquired from the Land, Water and Settlement project (http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/land-water-settlement), whose work has laid the foundations for the work being carried out by the TwoRains project.
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