Webinar 19 June 2025: Nuancing ancient cuisines through microCT of amorphous carbonized objects скачать в хорошем качестве

Webinar 19 June 2025: Nuancing ancient cuisines through microCT of amorphous carbonized objects

The EXCITE Academy Webinar Series aims to inspire you. Experts and EXCITE users share expertise, experiences and ideas so we can advance the field together. Webinar 19 June 2025 by Clarissa Cagnato, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy. Clarissa Cagnato shared her experiences with using the facilities in the EXCITE Network for her research. Her research aims at developing ways to study millimetric amorphous carbonized objects (ACOs) – the potential relics of complex foods – with a special focus on those recovered from pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican contexts (AD 250-900). To achieve this, a reference collection through a set of replicative experiments was first developed using ingredients known to have been available to ancient Maya and Teotihuacan populations. These foods were subsequently exposed to varying thermal conditions for different periods of time and then analyzed using a set of non-destructive imaging techniques: optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and lab-based computed microtomography (μCT) and synchrotron radiation X-ray computed microtomography (SR-μCT). The results indicate that combining these techniques can provide a set of diagnostic elements and features that can help refine the identification of ancient complex foods.