Millet bread and pulse dough from early Iron Age South India: Charred food lumps as culinary indicators

Bates, J.L.; Black, Kelly; Morrison, Kathleen D.

doi:10.1016/j.jas.2021.105531

Cited by 5 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…In addition, they mostly contain fragments of seeds and grain-derived plant cells, and are irregular in form and porous in texture, with voids and cracks of variable sizes. Similar items, interpreted as carbonised food remains and matched by experimentally reproduced examples, have previously been reported in recent archaeobotanical literature (Carretero et al 2017;Valamoti et al 2021;Bates et al 2022).…”

Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 79%

“…As carbonised dung is frequently found in archaeobotanical samples, it was important to exclude the possibility that the charred, amorphous plant aggregates might be faecal remains. During microscopic examination, charred dung fragments often appear fibrous, with matted/layered stems included in a dense matrix that often contains spherulites (Smith et al 2019;Bates et al 2022). None of the Franchthi and Shanidar fragments contain spherulites, or inclusions of grass stems and leaf fragments and we therefore interpret these amorphous plant aggregates as likely food remains.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…Charred plant aggregates may take the form of large, recognisable items of food (Heiss et al 2017), carbonised crusts adhering to the walls of pottery vessels (Kubiak-Martens et al 2015) or amorphous lumps, some of which could represent accidentally charred food remains (Valamoti et al 2021;Bates et al 2022); microscopic examination is required to confirm their interpretation as food remains and to identify their plant components. The charred amorphous plant aggregates recovered at Franchthi and Shanidar were sorted using a Leica S8 APO stereo-zoom microscope (magnification ×7-80).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…2021; Bates et al . 2022); microscopic examination is required to confirm their interpretation as food remains and to identify their plant components. The charred amorphous plant aggregates recovered at Franchthi and Shanidar were sorted using a Leica S8 APO stereo-zoom microscope (magnification ×7–80).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…2019; Bates et al . 2022). None of the Franchthi and Shanidar fragments contain spherulites, or inclusions of grass stems and leaf fragments and we therefore interpret these amorphous plant aggregates as likely food remains.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cooking in caves: Palaeolithic carbonised plant food remains from Franchthi and Shanidar

et al. 2022

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Research on Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer diet has focused on the consumption of animals. Evidence for the use of plant foods is comparatively limited but is rapidly expanding. The authors present an analysis of carbonised macro-remains of processed plants from Franchthi Cave in the Aegean Basin and Shanidar Cave in the north-west Zagros Mountains. Microscopic examination of the charred food remains reveals the use of pounded pulses as a common ingredient in cooked plant foods. The results are discussed in the context of the regional archaeobotanical literature, leading the authors to argue that plants with bitter and astringent tastes were key ingredients of Palaeolithic cuisines in South-west Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean.

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Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 89%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cooking in caves: Palaeolithic carbonised plant food remains from Franchthi and Shanidar

et al. 2022

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Comparable quantification methodologies in archaeobotany – a work-in-progress and debate

Bates,

Jiménez-Arteaga

2024

Veget Hist Archaeobot

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The way archaeobotanists name and quantify seed fragments is a determinant step not only in the interpretation of a given macrobotanical assemblage, but also in the degree of comparability across different sites. However, seed terminology and quantification have yet not been standardised among scholars but rely on the various geographical and laboratory traditions, as well as specific research needs and circumstances. This has created two major biases: first, the main focus has been put on plants of economic importance, specially Near Eastern and European cereals (barley, wheat, rye and oats); and second, while there has been notable discussion about quantification methods such as ubiquities, densities, proportions, or more complex multivariate statistics, there is often little explicit discussion of the actual first counting stage (i.e. how one goes from things under a microscope to things in raw data or how the Minimum Number of Individuals -MNI- is calculated). In the case of South Asian archaeobotany, the economic role of other cereal species (e.g. millets, rice) and non-cereal crops (e.g. pulses, oilseeds), as well as the usually high fragmentation state in which macrobotanical remains are found, lead us to reflect on the need to establish a more accurate and comparable quantification methodology in the region. We believe that applying this to all seed fragments will also be an important tool to better understand the role of wild taxa (e.g. fruits) in ancient diets and improve the potential contribution of weeds to disentangle past agricultural systems. In this paper, we propose a new work-in-progress terminology and counting method which, far from concluded, is intended to be a starting point for future fruitful debate and development.

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Asia, South: Neolithic

Fuller

Hollander

2023

Reference Module in Social Sciences

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Millet bread and pulse dough from early Iron Age South India: Charred food lumps as culinary indicators

Cited by 5 publications

References 43 publications

Cooking in caves: Palaeolithic carbonised plant food remains from Franchthi and Shanidar

Cooking in caves: Palaeolithic carbonised plant food remains from Franchthi and Shanidar

Comparable quantification methodologies in archaeobotany – a work-in-progress and debate

Asia, South: Neolithic

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