Supplementary materials for: Funerary vs. domestic vessels from the Hallstatt period. A study on ceramic vases from the Milejowice settlement and the Domasław cemetery

This record contains the supplementary materials (figures, photos and additional data) for the article: Rosiak A., Józefowska A., Sekulska-Nalewajko J., Gocławski J., Kałużna-Czaplińska J. (2024). Funerary vs. domestic vessels from the Hallstatt period. A study on ceramic vases from the Milejowice settlement and the Domasław cemetery, Scientific Reports 14, 19942. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-70219-7

Prepared within the research project: Feeding and Ritual Practices of the Early Iron Age based on the Settlement in Milejowice and the Necropolis in Domasław: Between the Function and Meaning of Ceramic ‘Collections’, financed by the National Science Centre, Poland (NCN).
Grant no.: 2021/41/B/HS3/02531 Principal Investigator: Anna Józefowska-Domańska

About the article
The study compares 31 vase-shaped vessels (16 funerary, 15 settlement) from the Domasław cemetery and the Milejowice settlement (Lower Silesia, Poland). Organic-residue analyses by GC–MS targeted fatty acids and biomarkers; multivariate statistics (PLS-DA, PCA) and clustering (fuzzy C-means, hierarchical clustering) were used to distinguish functional groups. Results show systematic differences between funerary and domestic contexts and indicate mixtures consistent with seeds/nuts/berries, plant oils, animal fats (meat/milk), honey/resins, and fermented beverages.

Methods 
Sherd powders were Soxhlet-extracted (CH₂Cl₂:MeOH 2:1, 200 mL, 4 h) with tetracosane internal standard, silylated (BSTFA+1% TMCS, 30 min, 75 °C) and run on Agilent 6890N / 5973 MSD, HP-5MS column, He 0.9 mL/min, 1 µL splitless; oven 60 °C → +12 °C/min → 300 °C; EI 70 eV, m/z 50–550. Identification via Wiley/NIST; quantification by internal normalisation; statistics in R and MetaboAnalyst.

Data notes
Key outcomes include discriminatory roles of C13:0, C15:0, C22:0 and C22:0/(C16:0+C20:0); funerary vases show higher incidence of benzoic acid and plant-oil signals; clustering accuracy ~0.84 for acid-feature subsets.