Soft Ionization mass spectrometry of lipid residues in archaeological findings: ESI vs APCI

Abstract

Abstract The organic residues that are found preserved in ceramics may be an extraordinary source of information regarding the function of the archaeological items and therefore provide insights on the life of our ancestors. In this view, lipids, that make up a major part of naturally occurring fats and oils, have gained in the last decades a special attention in molecular archaeology research. However, speciation of lipid is rather complicated due to the variety of congeners, the existence of several structures within the same raw formula, the presence of positional isomers. Soft ionization coupled to mass spectrometry has been proved to be powerful tool to manage this complexity because enable structural elucidation trough a tailored fragmentation, and may adopted with low amount of sample even as mixture, which is not suitable to other analytical techniques. Under this respect, mass spectra obtained from artificial weathered reference material and archaeological material are here presented, and some interesting feature discussed, with a specific focus to triacylglycerols (TAGs) the most abundant lipid class in fat and oils