The constituent materials used in the present work are listed in Table 2 but nylon fiber was not used for the image analysis specimens.
Specimens were taken only from the mortar portion of the Φ 100 × 200 mm, round-shaped test block without any aggregates included, as in the case of the specimens for the SEM analysis; specimens were then finely ground.
The specimen is then transferred into the LEAP for nanoscale tomographic compositional analysis via the ETH transfer rod shown in Fig. 1b, 2. Note that, for APT analysis, specimens are kept at cryogenic temperatures 25 100 K at all times.
For micro-computed tomography (μCT) analysis, specimens will be scanned at 8.93 µm voxel resolution on an EVS corp.
As with the postcranial analysis, specimens from the older stratigraphic layers of the excavation and deeper cave interiors are the focus of this discussion.
For histological analysis, specimens were fixed with 4% paraformaldehyde.
For discordant analysis specimens were re-tested using another commercial multiplex PCR, the PneumoBacter-1 assay (Seegene, Korea).
For SEM analysis, specimens cells were fixed in 2% gluteraldehyde in 0.1 M cacodylate buffer (pH 7.4).
