TY - DATA T1 - Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry Data used for "Identifying Palaeolithic birch tar production techniques: challenges from an experimental biomolecular approach" PY - 2023/09/08 AU - Paul Kozowyk AU - Liliana Baron AU - Geeske Langejans UR - https://data.4tu.nl/articles/dataset/_/21908796 DO - 10.4121/21908796.v1 KW - Archaeology KW - Neanderthal KW - Birch pitch KW - Biomarker N2 -

This data set contains gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS) data of eight experimentally reproduced Palaeolithic birch bark tars. The intentional production of birch bark tar by European Neanderthals plays an important role in discussions about the technological and behavioural complexity of Pleistocene hominins. However, research is hampered because it is currently unknown how Neanderthals were producing birch tar. Organic biomarkers, identified with Gas Chromatograph-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS), provide a promising way to identify possible production processes. Analysis of this data is presented and discussed in a research article written by Kozowyk et al. in Scientific Reports 2023. The attached GC-MS data provides additional information on the chemical composition of experimental birch bark tars. The dataset is made up of 2 types of files: Raw GC-MS data in .zip files for each experiment (containing .acaml, .dx, .mfx, .bin, .rx, .pmx, .amx) which can be used for further analysis and post-processing, and a summary (.xlsx) file documenting the key biomarkers and peak retention times used in the publication and information about the tar samples. The summary GC-MS .xlsx file contains peaks automatically assigned by the software from the NIST database and may contain errors. Relevant peaks used in the manuscript have been manually checked and renamed where appropriate. Finally, all data used and produced for PCA is available as .csv files.

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