The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), and the University of Bordeaux have developed an innovative method for the characterization of ivory in museum objects. The study, carried out in the Art and Cultural Heritage (ARCHE) CNRS laboratory in Bordeaux, makes it possible to determine ivory species from microscopic samples of museum objects as old as 6,000 years. This work was recently published in the academic journal Science Advances.
An international research team led by Caroline Tokarski (Univ. Bordeaux, CNRS) and Julie Arslanoglu (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Department of Scientific Research) successfully identified the biological origins of microscopic amounts of ivory and bone from artifacts dating back to 4000 BCE. Using proteomics to unlock sequence uncertainties, the team identified species of bone and ivory objects from Scandinavia, Hawaii, Belgium, and Central Europe, as well as differentiated elephant and hippopotamus ivory in Ancient Egyptian material. The American Museum of Natural History, New York contributed to this project by supplying exemplars of underrepresented species to create a reference protein database.
Caroline Tokarski, Professor at the University of Bordeaux and Director of the Proteome Platform, said: “For 20 years now, advanced mass spectrometry has been changing the analytical landscape of art, archaeology, and cultural heritage. Spectacular progress has been made throughout the years considering the sample amounts needed for proteomics analysis, inversely proportional to the level and quality of collected information. Here we are overpassing the current achievement with a more in-depth method with MS3 sequencing, confirming several sequence uncertainties critical for taxon id and starting from extremely small amounts of samples.”
The team assembled a large and diverse set of objects from the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The study successfully delivered vital insights of the objects, showing no influence from factors such as age or expected species of origin. This information offered essential details regarding the objects, including their production processes, and contributed to a deeper understanding of material trade across cultures.
Julie Arslanoglu, Research Scientist at The Met, said: “Accurate species identification can tell us whether a culture used local or traded materials and whether the makers were deliberate in their materials choices. Material culture holds much information about traditions, values, geographic environment, and economic networks. The work we did though the ARCHE CNRS partnership, reducing the sample size requirements without compromising on the quality of the data obtained, allows us to finally mine this essential information. This opens the door for deeper conversations about our global cultural heritage.”
