We are pleased to announce a School Seminar by Dr Melanie Roffet Salque on the topic of: A multi-disciplinary approach for the investigation of milk exploitation in the past.
Abstract
The Neolithisation process is characterised by a shift to permanent food-producing economies. Of the new foodstuffs introduced with animal and plant domestication, milk and dairy products had the most notable impact on human biology, with 35% of the global adult population now being able to digest lactose, the milk sugar. Various methods have been developed to assess prehistoric milk production, milk use and milk consumption, offering multiple avenues of investigation to study geographical and diachronic trends in milk exploitation in the past. Most of those methods are based on isotope analysis of various matrices, such as faunal remains (δ15N, δ13C), pottery sherds (δ13C) and human remains (δ44/42Ca). These highly complementary methods offer precious insights into past diets and the introduction of this new food into the human diet. Here I will present some of our work on ancient milk use in the past, and describe our plans for our new NERC-funded NeoCalcium grant focussed on calcium (with Elliott and Lewis).
Bio
Melanie moved to the University of Bristol to join Professor Richard Evershed FRS in the Organic Geochemistry Unit as a PhD student in 2008. She pursued her research as a post-doctoral research assistant in the same group. She used analytical chemistry to investigate archaeological artefacts to reconstruct the activities of past human societies.
Melanie then secured a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship in 2018 to lead on the development of deuterium isotopes in lipids to reconstruct well-dated terrestrial climate records at the archaeological site-level. Melanie secured a proleptic lectureship at the University of Bristol in 2022, and was promoted to Associate Professor in Environmental Chemistry in 2024.