Processing Archaeological Plant Material

1
Paleo-ethno-botany'ancient' - 'people' -
'plants'

• Processing Archaeological Plant Material
• Subsistence
• Reconstructing Past Environments
• Plant Domestication

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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.

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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
material through the mesh.
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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.
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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

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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).

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Non-Food Uses

• Plant oils were not only incorporated into food,
  but also were used as a base for body paints and
  for dressing peoples hair.
• Also used for cordage, clothing, housing, fire,
  medicines, and tools.

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Making Fiber Cordage
Fiber Twisting http//rla.unc.edu/lessons/Lesson/L
207/L207.htm
Materials like the plant Dogbane
http//imnh.isu.edu/Public/JustForKids/CordageDi
scoveryBox/SubMenu_1/content_1A_Dogbane_temp.htm
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Examples
Fiber Cordage http//imnh.isu.edu/Public/JustForKi
ds/CordageDiscoveryBox/SubMenu_1/sub_menu1_Materia
ls_temp.htm
YUCCA FIBER SANDALS Culture AnasaziDates
Basketmaker III, ca. AD 450-750Location
Northeastern AZMaterial yucca
fiber http//www.statemuseum.arizona.edu/coll/peri
s3.shtml
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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

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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.

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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

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Examples
Charred Broomcorn Millet Seed, Japan(photo by Y.
Tsubakisaka,Hokkaido University)
Pistachio Wood Charcoal, Algeria40x
magnification(from Couvert, M. 1977.
http//www.sfu.ca/archaeology/museum/ask/subsis.ht
m
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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.

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Examples
Agave pollen from a Texas coprolite.
http//www.unl.edu/Reinhard/paleonut.html
http//www.poplarforest.org/newsltr/pollen.htm
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Corn Phytoliths
http//www.missouri.edu/phyto/maize.htm
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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.

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Examples
Fossil Plant Cuticles http//www.biologie.uni-hamb
urg.de/b-online/kerp/ekutikul.html
Diatoms http//www.indiana.edu/diatom/diatom.html
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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.

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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.

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Three thousand-year old sunflower and squash
seeds from Marble Bluff, Arkansas (right)
Studied by Dr. Gail Fritz, Washington University
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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.

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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.

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The Three SistersCorn, Beans and Squash
Corn (Zea mays)
Pepo Squash (Cucurbita pepo)
Common Bean (Phaseolus vulgaris)
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Three Sisters Growing Together
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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
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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 149155.
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Processing
Pounding Grain at Adi Ainawalid, Tigrai,
Ethiopia. 
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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.