Plant food storage and surplus management of the first agricultural societies of SE Europe

Högre seminariet i arkeologi och miljöarkeologi bjuder in till seminarium med Dr. Elena Marinova, Laboratory for Archaeobotany, State Office for Cultural Heritage Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Seminariet har den engelska titeln "A case study on plant food storage and surplus management of the first agricultural societies of SE Europe"

Abstract:

Storage practices are a vital element of the subsistence strategies of the early agricultural societies as such facilities are securing food resources on a long term and precondition for sustainable demographic growth. Recent excavations at the Early Neolithic (6100- 5850 cal BC) settlement horizons of Slatina, one of the largest settlements situated on one of the Neolithization route between the Aegean littoral and the Danube Basin, revealed abundant storage structures in several buildings. In the current paper we present the archaeobotanical finds from over 70 storages in their detailed archaeological context majority (ca. 50) preserved at least partly in situ. In the most of the intact storage vessels the staple crops are found as pure concentration of one species and very few have mixed character. Some of the plant concentrations were found not associated with clay vessels, most probably stored in perishable containers. Most of the uncovered storages of cereals were found in unthreshed state (together with the chaff), but few of them contained clearly processed (grinded or broken) cereals, showing also intermediate stages of food preparation which took place in the household. Apart of annual crops (mostly hulled wheats, but also free threshing wheat, barley, lentil and pea) also ca. 6 concentrations of gathered from the wild plants (like Cornelian cherry, plum and apple/pear) were found and they confirm clearly the importance of the wild plant resources in the Early Neolithic economy of the site. Due to the good preservation, it was possible to estimate the approximate (preserved) volumes of the stored plants and estimate relative importance of each group in the different buildings, and therefore to give detailed quantitative information on the past plant husbandry of an Early Neolithic site and to explore its diversity of storage facilities and plant food resources.

Om seminarieserien

I Högre seminariet i arkeologi och miljöarkeologi presenteras och diskuteras aktuell forskning inom arkeologi och miljöarkeologi.
Se fler seminarier i serien