Starch and Charcoal: Useful Measures of Activity Areas in Archaeological Rockshelters

Changes in starch grain morphologies from cooking

“…Starch grains, along with phytoliths and pollen, are plant microfossils, which are microscopic plant remains with unique morphologies that allow them to be identified in most cases to the family, genus or species of plant that produced them. Starch grains have been recovered from soils (Balme and Beck, 2002;Henry et al, 2004), stone tools dating from the Pleistocene through the Holocene periods (Barton, 2007;Fullagar et al, 2006;Pearsall et al, 2004;Piperno and Holst, 1998;Zarrillo et al, 2008) pottery (Crowther, 2005), and dental calculus (Boyadjian et al, 2007;Henry and Piperno, 2008;Piperno and Dillehay, 2008), and have been used to document diets of ancient animal and human groups, including plant domestication (Barton, 2007;Fullagar et al, 1996Fullagar et al, , 2006Loy et al, 1992;Pearsall et al, 2004;Perry et al, 2007;Piperno et al, 2000Piperno et al, , 2004Zarrillo and Kooyman, 2006), and even social and spatial organization of sites (Balme and Beck, 2002;Henry et al, 2004).…”

Using plant microfossils from dental calculus to recover human diet: a case study from Tell al-Raqā'i, Syria

“…Plant microfossils, such as phytoliths and starch grains, recovered from ancient sediments, stone tools, and pottery have been used to answer a variety of questions about tool use, origins of agriculture and other aspects of human behavior such as site organization (e.g., Albert et al, 2003;Balme and Beck, 2002;Fullagar et al, 2006;Kaplan et al, 1992;Loy et al, 1992;Madella et al, 2002;Parr and Carter, 2003;Pearsall et al, 2004;Perry, 2004;Piperno, 2006;Piperno et al, 2000Piperno et al, , 2004Piperno and Hoist, 1998;Rosen, 1997;Van Peer et al, 2003). Dietary information from sediments and tools may be incomplete or contain biases, however, because Corresponding author.…”

Airborne starch dispersal from stone grinding: Experimental results and implications

“…The experiment adds to a growing literature on airborne starch and contamination (Louderback et al, 2015;Thoms et al, 2015;Crowther et al, 2014;Laurence et al, 2011), and especially, for the analysis of sediment samples to identify activity areas (Balme and Beck, 2002;Beck and Balme, 2006;Haslam, 2006;Torrence, 2006a: 170-173). Given that airborne starch from grinding recovered as far as 10 m from an outdoor grinding location, archaeologists should be cognizant of intrasite contexts in starch analysis.…”

“…These tantalizing results give some scope to archaeological starch recovery. Balme and Beck (2002) tested starch concentration in soil contexts in Petzkes Cave, a large sandstone rockshelter in northern New South Wales, Australia. In an extensive testing regime, they found two high density locales, each approximately 20 times denser than the surrounding soil matrix.…”

“…Processing starch-rich foods, such as wheat, rice, and maize, expels starch granules into the air, which eventually settle onto the surrounding surfaces. Archaeologists typically interpret concentrations of starch within sediments as indicative of activity areas (Balme and Beck, 2002;Beck and Balme, 2006;Haslam, 2006;Torrence, 2006a: 170-173). To assess the reliability of these interpretations, attention must be given to site formation processes -particularly how starch is deposited in a given context, as well as possible sources of contamination (Barton and Matthews, 2006).…”