Processing Archaeological Plant MaterialSubsistence

Reconstructing Past Environments Plant Domestication

Paleo-ethno-botany'ancient' - 'people' - 'plants'

Paleoethnobotany

Paleoethnobotany is a branch of archaeology which studies how people in the past used plants.

Plant remains found in archaeological sites can tell us a great deal about the people who once lived there.

Paleoethnobotanists study the remains of ancient plants (mainly seeds) preserved in archaeological contexts which can be retrieved by flotation.

Processing Plant Material: Flotation

The entire soil sample is slowly poured into the barrel on top of the mesh and gently agitated with hands to break up any clumps and wash the materialthrough the mesh.

Flotation-Light Fraction

The water is allowed to flow steadily through the weir and into the sieves, taking any floating or suspended material with it. The water remains running until no further carbonized material floats to the surface.

Plant Remains

Macrobotanicals– Plant remains that can be seen with the naked

eye.– Nuts, seeds, charcoal, fruit pits

Microbotanicals– Plant remains that can only be observed

microscopically.– Pollen, phytoliths, fossil cuticles, diatoms

Subsistence: Wild Plants

Like people today, ancient people needed to eat a balanced diet with protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals.

For 99.5% of our human history we subsistend on a diet of hunted meat and gathered wild nuts, plants and fruit.

Plants such as sumpweed, sunflower, and squash are higher in kilocalories (535-560), and hickory is higher still (673).

Non-Food Uses

Plant oils were not only incorporated into food, but also were used as a base for body paints and for dressing people’s hair.

Also used for cordage, clothing, housing, fire, medicines, and tools.

Making Fiber Cordage

Fiber Twistinghttp://rla.unc.edu/lessons/Lesson/L207/L207.htm

Materials like the plant Dogbane

http://imnh.isu.edu/Public/JustForKids/CordageDiscoveryBox/SubMenu_1/

content_1A_Dogbane_temp.htm#

Examples

Fiber Cordagehttp://imnh.isu.edu/Public/JustForKids/CordageDiscoveryBox/SubMenu_1/sub_menu1_Materials_temp.htm

YUCCA FIBER SANDALSCulture: AnasaziDates: Basketmaker III, ca. AD 450-750Location: Northeastern AZMaterial: yucca fiberhttp://www.statemuseum.arizona.edu/coll/peris3.shtml

Environmental Reconstruction

Wood– Examine changes in forest zones

Seeds and fruits– seasonality

Palynology– Study of pollen grains – Pollen zones, changes in plant communities

Phytoliths– Silica from plant cells– Produced in large numbers, vegetation changes

Wood & Environment

Wood charcoal– Difficult to identify

Forest changes– Hypsithermal warming and drying trend

between 8,000 & 5,000 years ago.– Forests in Northeast shifted from boreal

(conifers) to deciduous (leafy trees). More open and patchy.

Seasonality

Nuts, Seeds and Fruits ripen at particular times

Used to determine site seasonality– Nuts (walnut, acorn, hickory) in fall– Seeds (sumpweed & poke) in late summer– Fruits (hackberry) in late spring

Examples

Charred Broomcorn Millet Seed, Japan(photo by Y. Tsubakisaka,Hokkaido University)

http://www.sfu.ca/archaeology/museum/ask/subsis.htm

Pistachio Wood Charcoal, Algeria40x magnification(from Couvert, M. 1977.

Pollen and Phytoliths Palynology (pollen analysis) has been used by North

American environmental archaeologists for decades but its function has evolved from simply providing broad scale paleoenvironmental reconstructions to examining more closely the changing relationships between people and vegetation.

Phytolith analysis has been used to a lesser extent, but is increasing. Both can be used to elucidate both the sequence of vegetation history and also the composition of agricultural fields and gardens, which allow our interpretations to account for the dynamic ways in which humans have manipulated their environs.

Examples

http://www.poplarforest.org/newsltr/pollen.htm

Agave pollen from a Texas coprolite. http://www.unl.edu/Reinhard/paleonut.html

Corn Phytoliths

http://www.missouri.edu/~phyto/maize.htm

Fossil Cuticles & Diatoms

Fossil Cuticles– Outermost layer of blades of grass, made of cutin-silica

cells.

– Used to identify changes in grassland environments. Diatoms

– Unicellular algae that have silica walls.

– Found in bottom of water (i.e. bogs).

– Determine condition of water-whether brackish, fresh, or salt at different times.

Examples

Fossil Plant Cuticles

http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/kerp/ekutikul.html

Diatomshttp://www.indiana.edu/~diatom/diatom.html

WEEDS VS. DOMESTICATES How does a domesticated plant differ from a wild or weedy

one, how can plants become domesticated, and how can an archaeologist tell which they have? – Both weedy and domesticated plants like to grow in soil that has

been disturbed, whereas wild plants do not. – Weedy plants possess a number of characteristics that enable them

to survive on their own: • they are good at dispersing their own seeds, • their seeds may have dormancy or the ability to lie in the ground for many

years before sprouting,• different plants and sections of individual flowers mature at different rates,

and • overall the plants display phenotypic (morphological) plasticity or variability.

How can such changes come about?

Nearly all of our domesticated plants were domesticated prehistorically by ancient peoples.

Archaeologists believe that domestication was an unconscious process that occurred thanks to everyday interactions between peoples and plants.

Three thousand-year old sunflower and squash seeds from Marble Bluff,

Arkansas (right)

Studied by Dr. Gail Fritz, Washington University

THE THREE SISTERS

The three sisters – maize, beans, and squash – were important in the diet of eastern North American Indians in the centuries just prior to contact by Europeans.

Long domesticated in Mexico, these crops spread into the Southwest and eastern North America. Their use is well documented in historic records.

Introduction of Corn, Beans & Squash

Less well known is that they did not spread together or evenly into the same areas.

More surprising, for thousands of years prior to their introduction, Indians domesticated and cultivatedlocal, North American crops.

Some of these ancient, native crops are now extinct.

The Three Sisters:Corn, Beans and Squash

Corn (Zea mays)

Pepo Squash (Cucurbita pepo)

Common Bean (Phaseolus vulgaris)

Three Sisters: Growing Together

Ceremonial Uses of Plants

For example, gourds filled with seeds are used to create rattles and musical instruments. These gourd rattles are from Mali and Ghana in West Africa.

http://www.sfu.ca/archaeology/museum/peb/plethbot.html

Images in Jewelry

Pendants found in the tomb of Puabi represent (from top to bottom) the flowering male date palm inflorescence, the fruiting branch of the date palm and a cluster of small apples. All these items are literal and figurative symbols of fruitfulness.

Miller, N.F., 2000: Plant Forms in Jewelry from the Royal Cemetery at Ur. Iraq 62: 149 155.

Processing

Pounding Grainat Adi Ainawalid, Tigrai, Ethiopia. 

Cooking

In many parts of the world, plants have made up the greatest part of the diet. Desired plants were collected, stored and processed and cooked in a wide variety of methods.  This is an oven in a traditional household in Adi Ainawalid, Tigrai, Ethiopia.