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Taxonomic characterisation of fresh Dipterocarpaceae resins by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS): providing clues for identification of unknown archaeological resins

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Abstract

Plant and particularly non-wood forest products have played an important role in the evolution of human cultures all over the world, as source of food but also of raw substances fulfilling material, spiritual, and medicinal requirements. Plant exudates and particularly dammar resins (Dipterocarpaceae family) were widely used in the past in Asia notably as waterproofing and caulking materials. This study focuses on the GC–MS chemical characterisation of freshly collected dammars and establishes new molecular parameters enabling discrimination between dammars and other types of plant resin, whatever their botanical origin. Such analyses provide clues for a precise identification (taxonomy, occurrence of other material in addition to the resin, alteration state) of unknown resinous material discovered in archaeological contexts. The value of our approach is illustrated by the taxonomic characterisation of two samples collected in jars from the Brunei wreck and a Chinese junk lost more than 40 km off the Sultanate of Brunei during the end of the fifteenth century or the early beginning of the sixteenth century.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Dr. Bui Thi Mai and Dr. Michel Girard (Laboratoire de Palynologie, Valbonne, France) for their kind cooperation in the collection of fresh dammars. We also wish to thank Michel L’Hour who collected the samples of the Brunei wreck and Nathalie Huet who gave us some samples from this key discovery for analysis. We are indebted to Cynthia Lampert who carried out analyses of some organic residues of the Brunei wreck and recognised the occurrence of Dipterocarpaceae resins in these samples. Finally, we would like to thank Michael Flecker who provided us samples from the Belitung and the M1J wrecks, and Bérénice Bellina who accepted to supply some resin samples from the 2005 campaign of excavations at Khao Sam Kaeo.

We thank Estelle Motsch (Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France) for mass spectral analysis and Michel Schmitt (Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France) for NMR measurements.

We are very grateful to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), the Deutsch-Französische Hochschule/Université Franco-Allemande (DFH/UFA) and the French Ministère de l’Education Nationale, de l’Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche (MENESR) for financial support through the International Research Training Group 532 (GRK 532). Finally, we thank the ANR for the support of the programme “Archeomolecule”.

Finally, the authors thank Dr. Matthew Collins and the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions which have contributed to improve this paper.

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  1. Laboratoire de Biogéochimie Moléculaire, UMR 7177 du CNRS, Université de Strasbourg, 67087, Strasbourg Cedex 2, France

    Pauline Burger, Armelle Charrié-Duhaut, Jacques Connan & Pierre Albrecht

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  1. Pauline Burger
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  2. Armelle Charrié-Duhaut
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  3. Jacques Connan
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Correspondence to Armelle Charrié-Duhaut.

Appendices

Appendix 1

Conventional numbering:

figure afigure a

Appendix 2

MS data of the main compounds cited in the text

betulonal 13: 55(100), 107(94), 205(89), 95(88), 93(83), 189(79), 121(70), 175(58), 133(52), 219(49), 410(35), 232(31), 409(24), 380(17), 438[M+] (15), 395(14).

2,3-dihydroxyolean-12-en-28-oic acid 15: 203(100), 262(67), 189(32), 202(28), 204(19), 187(19), 69(16), 133(15), 249(14), 450(4), 510(3), 570 [M+] (1).

2,3-dihydroxyurs-12-en-28-oic acid 16: 262(100), 203(66), 133(38), 189(23), 263(19), 249(16), 187(16), 450(3), 510(21), 570 [M+] (1).

2,3-dihydroxyoleana-n,12-dien-28-oic acid 17: 203(100), 262(67), 189(24), 202(23), 204(17), 187(16), 263(14), 133(14), 249(13), 568 [M+] (2), 508(2), 448(1).

2,3-dihydroxyursa-n,12-dien-28-oic acid 18: 262(100), 203(61), 133(33), 189(23), 263(19), 249(16), 189(15), 119(14), 202(12), 187(12), 204(10), 508(2), 568 [M+] (2), 448(1).

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Burger, P., Charrié-Duhaut, A., Connan, J. et al. Taxonomic characterisation of fresh Dipterocarpaceae resins by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS): providing clues for identification of unknown archaeological resins. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 3, 185–200 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-010-0050-z

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