Archaeological and Ethnographic Toxins in Museum Collections

The analysis of amorphous organic residues from archaeological and ethnographic collections provides direct evidence for the use of natural materials, which can help enrich interpretations of past societies. The value of this approach is increasing, driven by advances in extraction and analytical techniques that permit the analysis of an ever-wider range of compounds. However these approaches have not yet been targeted towards toxins based upon natural plant based poisons and narcotics. This paper will present the outline of a chemical analysis based approach to identifying trace residues associated with hunting poisons and sacred hallucinogens as well as poisons of a purely harmful nature. The successful exploitation of potentially lethal natural toxins can be taken as representative of the great ingenuity shown in man’s adaptation to the environment.