The Taphonomy of Plant and Livestock Dung Microfossils: An Ethnoarchaeological and Experimental Approach

Abstract

This study examines the contribution of ethnoarchaeological and experimental research to interdisciplinary approaches on the identification and taphonomy of livestock dung.Ethnographic and experimental records provide comparative reference models on a range of taphonomic issues that are still understudied, such as variation in the type and preservation of plant and faecal microfossils that are excreted with dung and the effects of heating. The focus in the present study is on the taphonomy of ingested phytoliths and calcitic spherulites that originate in the digestive tracts of cattle, sheep and goat found in fresh modern dung pellets. The reported records are from the modern farming village of Bestansur, Iraqi Kurdistan. The experimental results show significant changes in microfossil composition and phytolith and spherulite stability and integrity, with increased melting of phytoliths and variations in morphotype composition (e.g. grass short cells appear less stable) from heating at temperatures around 800 ºC, whereas the spherulite darkening occurs within a range between 500-700 ºC, with a maximum production at 650 ºC. This integrated approach illustrates the contribution of the muchneeded ethnographic and experimental records of animal dung to understanding of taphonomic issues, which are fundamental for the interpretation of this valuable microfossil material in archaeology.

Disentangling Human–Plant–Animal Dynamics at the Microscale: Geo-Ethnoarchaeological Case Studies from North Africa and the Near East

“…This evaluation builds on recent ethnoarchaeological work conducted on livestock management, grazing, foddering, seasonality, penning, dung collection, manipulation, and use, as well as on modern reference dung sampling, followed by geoarchaeological, archaeobotanical, zooarchaeological, geochemical, biochemical, and isotope analyses from different core regions, including, from east to west: (i) the foothills of the Zagros mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan [17,18,[40][41][42]; (ii) the Konya plain in central Anatolia, Turkey [6,29]; (iii) the Upper Khabur in northeastern Syria, northern Levant [15]; (iv) the Wadi Faynan in southern Jordan, southern Levant [16]; (v) the Negev Highlands, southern Israel, southern Levant [14]; and (vi) the High Tell in northwestern Tunisia, Eastern Maghreb [9,10].…”

“…Geo-ethnoarchaeological work conducted over recent years in the lower Zagros mountains has focused on livestock management, penning, grazing, foddering, manuring and other domestic activities, as well as on modern dung sampling, within the framework of ongoing archaeological excavations at Early Neolithic Bestansur, located on the western edge of the Shahrizor Plain in Iraqi Kurdistan, included on the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List. These studies were followed by zooarchaeological, phytolith, dung spherulite, isotope, and soil analyses, in addition to comparative experimental burning of fresh dung pellets under laboratory-controlled conditions [17,18,[40][41][42]. These investigations have explored how several households from the modern village of Bestansur (ca.…”

“…Building on further ethnoarchaeological fieldwork conducted in the modern farming village of Bestansur and its pasture grounds, comprising the floodplain and the lower foothills, an integrated experimental study focused on the burning (heating) of fresh pellets under laboratory-controlled conditions was undertaken in order to investigate microfossil taphonomy and its implications for identifying fuel dung remains in archaeological contexts [18]. This study aimed at shedding light on the long-term uses of dung as both fuel and fertiliser, either in its organic form or after being burned, and on the scarcity at present of ethnographical dung fuel materials from the study area since the introduction of gas.…”

“…A review of early human collection and manipulation of animal dung is timely as innovative methodological advances in analytical techniques enable accurate contextual identification and interpretation of microscopic dung traces and uses through integrated ethnoarchaeological approaches. The first pioneering geo-ethnoarchaeological works on faecal materials were undertaken in the 1990s [7] and were followed by many other studies and increasingly developed over recent decades across the Mediterranean region and the Sahara [8][9][10][11][12], the northern and southern Levant [13][14][15][16], the central Zagros [17,18], central and southern Asia [19][20][21], and eastern Africa [22][23][24], for example. The presence and use of animal dung in these investigations were routinely assessed through various techniques, including plant macro-and microfossil analysis, dung spherulite analysis, thin-section micromorphology, and chemical analyses.…”

Dung in the dumps: what we can learn from multi-proxy studies of archaeological dung pellets

“…Geo-ethnoarchaeological studies, especially micromorphological investigations since the 1980s, have helped to define a variety of animal dung-related archaeological deposits including characterization of pellets of a variety of herbivores (Brönnimann et al 2017), dung fuel (Gur-Arieh et al 2013;Portillo et al 2017Portillo et al , 2020, and stabling enclosures (Wattez et al 1990;Macphail et al 1997;Shahack-Gross et al 2003;Milek 2012;Shahack-Gross 2017). Many of these studies focused on dung (faecal) spherulites, direct indicators of animal dung in archaeological sediments.…”