The weapons of the glacier mummy of the chalcolithic "Man from the Hauslabjoch" (i.e. the "Tyrolean Iceman", nicknamed "Oetzi") contained traces of organic adhesives, obviously used to fix parts of his weapons (i.e., the flintstone arrowheads and the copper hatchet) to their respective shafts. In order to prove whether or not these adhesives might be birch bark pitches similar to some other organic materials found in Central and Northern Europe, model pitches were prepared from a large number of different trees and a sequence of analytical methods was developed to differentiate between the different species of trees. The crucial features of this analytical sequence consisted in the isolation of a characteristic terpene fraction by Kugelrohr distillation, followed by GC/MS analysis and by application of chemometrics to improve the interpretation of the GC/MS results. By this methodology it could be shown that Oetzi's weapons were glued by means of birch bark pitch. To prepare this, pyrolysis of the bark of the birch (betula pendula = betula verrucosa) obviously gave a tar, which on heating was converted into the thermoplastic pitch.

Among many other objects a number of (mainly broken) figurines made of burnt clay were found in a richly furnished Early Iron-age tomb excavated in Lower Austria. Some of these had a dark organic material on their legs, obviously intended to fix the figurines to a base. A small sample of this agglutinant was analyzed: upon isolation of the characteristic terpenecontaining fraction 13 C-nmr spectroscopy showed considerable quantities of betulin. Thus this adhesive can be considered as birch bark pitch.

Potsherds of a flask excavated in the ruins of a Late Bronze Age house of Troia VI were analyzed for the ancient content. Traces of lipids were found and analyzed by capillary gas chromatography: lauric acid, myristic acid, palmitic acid, stearic acid and oleic acid were identified -a mixture in which palmitic and stearic acid were the major components.All of these compounds survived predominantly as free fatty acids as well as in form of their salts. Since the form of the flask with a narrow mouth only allowed its use for keeping liquids, it can be assumed that the ancient content was either olive oil or milk; and the presence of lowerchain fatty acids is giving preference to milk.

The prehistoric adhesive used in central and northern Europe was most frequently prepared from the bark of the birch by means of a thermic process, usually assumed to have been pyrolysis to yield (via the intermediate step of a tar) a pitch. In order to rule out that the ancient products might have been made either by a simple extraction or -even more simply -by using a natural sap, such starting materials were studied. Although after drying up and heating both showed reasonably good adhesive properties, the 13 C-nmr spectra were remarkably different from those obtained from prehistoric agglutinants, e.g., giving no indication for the presence of betulin. Thus these two conceivable alternatives for the ancient preparation of the material in question can now be ruled out: the prehistoric adhesives can really be considered as pitch, prepared from the bark of the birch.