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The use of archaeobotanical assemblages in palaeoeconomic reconstructions

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 ARCHAIA
Case Studies on Research Planning,
Characterisation, Conservation
and Management of
Archaeological Sites

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Ingolf Thuesen

BAR International Series 1877

2008
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 The use of archaeobotanical assemblages in
palaeoeconomic reconstructions
Mette Marie Hald
Abstract
Charred plant remains from archaeological deposits are potentially useful for the reconstruction of ancient agricultural economies, in-
cluding the origins of agriculture, and the practices of growing, harvesting, storing, distributing, and consuming a crop. Here the back-
ground, methods and theories of archaeobotanical research are outlined, and illustrated by examples from studies in the Near East.
1. Introduction
Charred plant remains are often found in archaeological
deposits and are potentially useful indicators of palaeoeco-
nomic practices on ancient settlements. These practices
include the production and management of crops; the stor-
age, distribution and consumption of plants as food and
fodder; methods of field cultivation and processing of
crops; and the movement of crops as part of exchange rela-
tions with other sites. Apart from the purely economic and
nutritional aspects of food, the cultural and social practices
of food consumption may also be detected by the presence
of charred plant remains in the archaeological deposits.
The analytical methods of archaeobotany draw from a
range of information including ecological, environmental,
ethnographic and experimental studies, botanical surveys,
archaeological interpretation, and historical sources.
2. Preservation of plant remains
Archaeological plant remains are preserved as either
charred, waterlogged or desiccated specimens. In the Near
East, charring is the most common method of preservation.
Unless there is considerable post-depositional disturbance,
charred plant remains can survive in the ground for thou-
sands of years. Preservation of plants by charring depends
on a range of factors such as the temperature of the fire
in which they are burnt, depositional and post-depositional
formation processes, and the robustness and oil or moisture
content of the plants.
Charring of plants may happen through the catastrophic
or intentional burning of a house or part of a settlement,
through the intentional burning of plants as fuel in fire-
places, or through accidents during cooking or parching
(to release glumes from glume wheat grain or to sterilise
insect-infected crops). In order for plant material to sur-
vive, the temperature of the fire has to be either relatively
low (200-400º C), or the plants have to be buried in the
ashes so that the lack of oxygen prevents the plants from
being burnt to ashes themselves (Hillman 1981: 139).
The relative robustness of the various plant elements is
also important for their preservation: to survive burning in
a fireplace without being charred to ash, the plant elements
need to be both heavy enough to fall into the lower parts
of the fire and escape the flames, and dense enough not to
burn away completely (Boardman and Jones 1990, Hillman
1981: 139-40, Hillman 1984: 11). The plants also have to
be robust enough to survive the formation processes of the
archaeological deposits. These particular plant elements –
cereal grains and seeds, the lower parts of glumes, rachis
and straw nodes, and shells or stones from fruits and nuts
– are the types of charred plant remains most commonly
found on archaeological sites. Oil- or water-rich seeds
or plants, such as flax or sesame, are comparatively less
likely to survive burning; oil-rich seeds tend to boil and
explode when exposed to fire, though if not undergoing too
much post-depositional disturbance, the remains of them
can still be found (Hald and Charles 2008). Water-rich and
soft tissue plants such as vegetables rarely survive char-
ring, though seeds of vegetables may be found, and tubers
and parenchyma are also occasionally observed (Nesbitt
1995: 69).
3. Potential sources of plant remains
– factors of variation in sample com-
position
The archaeobotanical assemblage may derive from a wide
range of potential sources, which need to be considered
when using archaeobotanical remains for the reconstruc-
tion of past economic practices. Plants arrive on a site
for a number of reasons: they may have been brought to
a settlement intentionally as food for humans or fodder
for animals, or for the use as, for instance, roof thatching,
ceramic tempering or fuel for fireplaces. Plants may also
have arrived on the site more indirectly, for instance when
eaten by animals during grazing and appearing in dung
used for fuel. Part of the challenge for the archaeobota-
nist is to identify the means by which an archaeobotanical
assemblage arrived on a site; it goes without saying that
archaeobotanical questions on, for instance, the food crop
preferences of the inhabitants of an ancient settlement can
only be answered through the analysis of plants intended
for food, and not through plants intended for animal fod-
der, or used for fuel, or for construction material such as
mudbricks. Before attempting to define the crop economy
of a given site, therefore, it is necessary to ensure that an
 Mette Marie Hald
interpretation of archaeobotanical finds is based on an as-
semblage actually containing crops and/or weeds of crops.
3.1. Dung fuel as a potential source of plant remains
The burning of dung fuel in particular has been discussed
as an alternative source of charred plant remains to that
of food or fodder (Miller and Smart 1984, Charles 1998).
Dung from domestic animals, in the form of ‘dung cakes’
(dung mixed with straw and chaff as a ‘temper’) is a popu-
lar source of fuel in many areas of the Near East, both be-
cause of its good burning qualities but also because it is an
alternative to wood which is often a rare resource in arid
regions. Today, the use of dung as fuel is regularly associ-
ated with deforested areas (Miller and Smart 1984). Various
plants are likely to be associated (though not exclusively)
with dung: some wild taxa are noted for their usefulness as
grazing plants, such as the legumes Astragalus, Medicago
and Trigonella sp. (Townsend and Guest 1974); the former
is also collected for fuel on its own (Nesbitt 1995: 77, Van
Zeist and Bakker-Heeres 1985: 234). Prosopis sp., the
fruits of which are eaten by sheep and goats (and humans
in times of food shortage), has been associated in particular
with dung-derived archaeobotanical material due to its late
flowering season; since crops in the Near East are prima-
rily winter sown and harvested in the spring, Prosopis sp.,
fruiting in September, is not a crop weed, and when present
in archaeobotanical material is more likely to have arrived
with animal dung (Charles 1998: 114). Scirpus sp. has also
been associated with dung in some archaeobotanical stud-
ies (Fairbairn et al. 2002: 45-48). Considering that archae-
ological plant remains often come from domestic hearths
where dung could have been used as a fuel, it is important
to identify and separate dung-derived plant material in an
archaeobotanical assemblage before reaching any conclu-
sions on ancient plant use.
3.2. Crop processing as a factor of sample composition
Crop processing is the process by which a harvested crop is
cleaned and prepared for consumption, by threshing, win-
nowing and sieving the crop to remove straw, chaff, weed
seeds and other impurities such as earth and small stones.
Ethnographic studies of ‘traditional’ non-mechanised
farming economies have shown that a harvested crop goes
through some thirty operational sequences in order to be
cleaned (Hillman 1981, Hillman 1984, Jones 1984, Jones
1987, Jones 1990). The crop processing stages of winnow-
ing, coarse and fine sieving each produce products and by-
products that are likely to appear in archaeological depos-
its. The various processes involved in cleaning a harvested
crop change the original composition of crops and weeds
in an assemblage, at the same time leaving specific ‘sig-
nature’ patterns in the relative abundance of plant compo-
nents (grains, seeds and chaff) in the crop samples (Table
1). When investigating the habitat and crop management
of specific crops, the origin of an archaeobotanical assem-
blage in terms of crop processing stages must therefore be
identified, and comparisons made only between samples
from the same processing stage, thus eliminating the vari-
ation in the samples that is due to crop processing rather
than to, for instance, food preference.
224
4. Field methods of archaeobotany
4.1. Soil sampling
During excavation, soil for recovering archaeobotanical
material should be sampled from a range of contexts, such
as pits, pots, fireplaces, and general room fill, to make sure
that the samples are representative of all excavated areas.
Sample size will vary, and may often be limited to the size
of the context that it is taken from, such as a small pit or ce-
ramic vessel. For larger contexts such as room fill, 50-litre
samples can be taken at intervals across the room, which is
useful in the investigation of spatial variation in the prepa-
ration and consumption of food products. In the case of
large pits, multiple samples can also be taken at vertical
intervals, which is useful in determining seasonal differ-
entiation in the deposition of bioarchaeological waste, thus
helping to determine seasonal events (Wright et al. 1989).
Generally, sample size depends on the richness of charred
plant remains in the soil: whereas only small samples may
be needed from deposits with rich concentrations of seeds,
from deposits with low seed density, large-volume samples
are needed to recover a statistically representative number
of plant remains.
The volume of each sample should be recorded before
processing in order to have a comparative measure of the
concentrations of archaeobotanical material in each de-
posit. The density of a concentration (i.e., the number of
seeds per litre of soil) is a reflection of the rate of deposi-
tion of plants; a large amount of crops, for instance, spoiled
in storage or during cooking and deposited in a pit or bin as
a single event, will tend to have been less mixed with other
kinds of refuse than the crops which may have been dis-
carded in smaller amounts over longer periods of time, for
instance during day-to-day fine sieving and hand-sorting
of grains before cooking. Calculating the density of plant
items per litre of floated soil for each sample is thus useful
for distinguishing between single and repeated events of
discard (Jones 1987: 317).
Samples should be taken as whole-earth samples, i.e., in-
cluding everything that is found in the particular volume of
soil. In this way the sample can serve as a control of the on-
site recovery rate of archaeological material on the site; this
method has proven useful at the Tell Brak project in North-
Eastern Syria, particularly in the study of animal bones:
though the soil samples taken at Tell Brak contained a higher
number of smaller bone fragments, the variety and distribu-
tion of animal species found in the soil samples was similar
to that of the handpicked material (J. Weber, pers. comm.).
4.2. Flotation of soil samples
Extraction of plant remains from the soil matrix is carried
out with the use of a flotation tank. A water-recycling flo-
tation system, based on the model developed by French
(1971) and running on electrical pump power is by far the
most efficient, and the system can be built with materials
readily available in the Near East.
Flotation works on the simple principle that soil, and any
non-charred archaeological material included in the soil,
is heavier than water, which again is heavier than carbon.
Consequently, mixing a volume of soil with water in a flota-
tion tank will result in the soil (and archaeological remains
 The use of archaeobotanical assemblages in palaeoeconomic reconstructions
such as bone, chipped stone, and ceramics) sinking to the
bottom of the tank, and the charred plant remains floating
to the surface of the water. The charred material, which is
commonly referred to as the ‘flot’, is then easy to ‘decant’
into a sieve with a maximum mesh size of 300 μm, to en-
sure the retrieval of as many potentially identifiable seeds
as possible. The remaining soil should be taken out of the
tank to dry and be sorted for archaeological remains such
as pottery, bones, chipped stone, and small objects such as
beads. The flot should be hung up to dry in the shade, and
taken to a lab for analysis.
5. Quantitative analysis of charred
plant assemblages
Subsampling, identification and quantification of charred
plant remains will now be briefly discussed.
Once the samples have arrived in the laboratory, a brief
scanning of each sample is useful in order to assess the
richness and variety of the assemblage. Depending on the
richness, in plant remains, of the samples recovered from
the excavation, it is sometimes necessary to split the sam-
ples to make the time-consuming laboratory analysis cost-
efficient. In the case of rich samples, it has been estimated
that in order to reach an accuracy to within 5% of the per-
centage content of a sample with an estimated total of 1000
seeds, 278 seeds are needed for analysis (Van der Veen and
Fieller 1982: 296). Large samples can therefore be split
down to this estimated size, using a sample splitter (ibid.).
Identification of seeds is based on their morphological
characteristics and is made with the help of modern seed
reference collections, floras, seed atlases, photographs,
drawings and keys (for the Near East, particularly useful
reference works include Davis et al. 1965-1988, Guest
1966, Nesbitt 2006, Townsend and Guest 1966-85, Van
Zeist and Bakker-Heeres 1985, Van Zeist and Bakker-
Heeres 1986a, Van Zeist and Bakker-Heeres 1986b, Van
Zeist and Bakker-Heeres 1988, Zohary and Hopf 2000).
Morphological characteristics are still the main source
of distinction between wild, cultivated and domesticated
plants, used in the discussion of the origins of agriculture,
the theories of which are primarily based on the presence
of plants in various stages of domestication on archaeo-
logical sites, thereby mapping the spread and distribution
of founder crops (Helbæk 1970, Zohary and Hopf 2000).
Recently, the study of ancient DNA has been applied as a
method of identifying agricultural founder crops (Brown
1999); though there are still some problems with this meth-
od, including the expense of the method and the unpre-
dictability of actually retrieving DNA from charred plant
remains, the analysis of DNA in archaeological material
does hold great potential.
Identified plant items are tabulated, most commonly as
counts of ‘Minimum Number of Individuals’ (MNIs) in a
spreadsheet. ‘MNI’, a term borrowed from the methodol-
ogy used in the analysis of archaeozoological assemblages,
ensures that counts are as realistic as possible, by avoiding
accidentally counting fragments from the same seed more
than once. To do this, certain features of seeds have been
proposed as useful for representing whole seeds, leaving
225
out other fragments and thus preventing ‘double’ counting.
These features, based on their being durable and easy to
recognise, include embryo ends of cereal grains and grass-
es, and glume bases representing each side of a spikelet
fork (Jones 1991: 65-66)
6. Pattern searching in the archaeo-
botanical assemblage
An assemblage of archaeobotanical samples may poten-
tially contain several thousand identified seeds, and hun-
dreds of taxa (families, genera, species). The application of
statistical tools is therefore useful in order to ‘make sense’,
as it were, of the large dataset, and investigate patterns of
variation between samples.
Variation between archaeobotanical samples and the factors
behind it (chronological variation, archaeological context,
methods of crop management) can be investigated using
correspondence analysis, which detects variation in the
composition of samples by comparing the taxon composi-
tion of each sample with every other sample, and places each
variable (samples or taxa) in a plot along axes according to
the similarities or differences between the variables (Fig. 1).
By coding each variable according to potential factors of
variation (samples from different archaeological contexts,
or taxa with different water level requirements), one can
investigate which factors account for the most variation,
which may lead to conclusions about crop management, the
use of specific areas for the processing or storage of crops,
chronological changes in crop preferences, and so on.
As mentioned above, crop processing is a major factor in
the composition of archaeobotanical samples, and needs
to be accounted for when investigating an archaeobo-
tanical assemblage. Studies by Glynis Jones (1984, 1987,
1990) have shown how specific crop processing stages
of archaeobotanical samples can be identified using the
weed seed attributes related to processing methods (size,
weight, and ‘aerodynamic’ properties, that is, how well
a seed ‘flies’; see ‘method/equipment’ column, Table 1).
Jones’ ethnographic study of crop processing methods in
Greece has shown that by-products (i.e., non-edible plant
parts) of winnowing and coarse sieving and the by-product
and product (i.e., the grains) of fine sieving can each be
separated in groups by discriminant analysis, which, in the
words of Shennan (1997: 350):
‘presupposes that we can divide our observations
into groups on the basis of some criterion and then
attempts to find ways of distinguishing those same
groups on the basis of some independent criterion
derived from the data’.
This method was used by Hald (2008) for comparing the
weed seed composition of a Late Chalcolithic archaeobo-
tanical assemblage from Tell Brak with those from the eth-
nographic study of crop processing made by Jones.
By entering the archaeological material in the same plot
as the ethnographically known samples, it was determined
that the majority of the samples were fine sieving by-prod-
ucts, i.e. the chaff and small weed seeds from one of the
 Mette Marie Hald
last stages of crop processing (Fig. 2). This information
could be used to determine where in the settlement the
various stages of crop cleaning were carried out (or the by-
products stored), and to ensure that for the investigation
of crop growing conditions, only samples from the same
stage were compared.
6.1. Investigating crop management practices from
weed seeds
Ancient crop management practices can be reconstructed
partly from the presence and composition of crop species
in archaeobotanical samples, but most importantly from
the weed species associated with these crops. Whereas
crop species can often grow in a range of different habitats
and are usually relatively tolerant of changes in humidity,
salinity, or methods of crop husbandry, some weed species
are often comparatively more habitat-specific. Weed spe-
cies associated with certain crop species, therefore, may be
useful indicators of the conditions under which these crops
were growing (Bogaard et al. 1999, Bogaard et al. 2001,
Charles and Hoppé 2003, Charles et al. 2003, Jones 1984,
Jones 1987).
The Functional Interpretation of Botanical Surveys (FIBS)
is a method used to infer ancient crop husbandry practic-
es from archaeobotanical samples (Bogaard et al. 1999,
Bogaard et al. 2001, Charles et al. 1997, Charles et al. 2003).
Functional attributes related to different growing conditions
are measured on weed species attested archaeologically.
Attributes such as germination time, onset and length of
flowering period, canopy height and leaf thickness relate to
habitat conditions such as sowing time, watering, fallowing
and crop rotation regimes. Once these specific attributes are
known for the archaeological species, habitat conditions,
and, by inference, past crop management practices, can be
assessed. A study by Charles et al. (2003) on the Kerak Pla-
teau, Northern Jordan, using this method, has shown that
it is possible to recognise different watering regimes (fully
or biennially irrigated, dry-farmed) used in fields, while a
similar study by Bogaard et al. (1999) found that it was
possible to discriminate between various crop rotation and
fallowing regimes by using functional attributes.
Recent attempts at detecting manuring and watering re-
gimes of crops by the use of stable nitrogen isotope (δ15N)
ratios in cereal grains have so far been successful (Bogaard
et al. 2007). This method is highly useful when working
on archaeobotanical assemblages that may not include a
sufficient number of weed seeds for weed ecology studies
such as FIBS (for instance, very clean stored crops).
6.2. Investigating distribution, consumption and stor-
age practices
The finds of large on-site crop storage areas, such as those
found at Tell Brak in North-Eastern Syria (Hald 2001,
Hald and Charles 2008), among others, provide us with
an opportunity to investigate the practices of crop storage,
as well as indicators of the practices of distribution and
consumption of crops within a settlement. A study of com-
munal crop storage in Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze
Age levels at Tell Brak (Hald and Charles 2008) has shown
that in the Late Chalcolithic, several types of crops, includ-
ing barley and flax, were stored in communal space, along
226
with the chaff by-product of emmer wheat cleaning, indi-
cating that this by-product may have held some economic
importance. In the Early Bronze Age, however, barley is
the only crop found in a definite storage context, and on a
much larger institutional scale than the earlier storage ar-
eas. It appears, therefore, that storage practices changed
through time, increased in scale, and came to focus on a
much narrower range of crops to be held in communal stor-
age than previously. The reasons for this intensification of
the agricultural economy of the site may be found in the
continuous growth of Tell Brak during the periods in ques-
tion, necessitating a growing number of inhabitants to be
freed from food production, and thus necessitating larger
amounts of crops to be redistributed as food rations.
Stable nitrogen isotope ratios in human bone collagen have
been used to investigate past diet, particularly distinguish-
ing between plant and animal based food. The method is
based on the observation that δ15N increases up the food
chain, with herbivores having higher values than the plants
they eat (Bogaard et al. 2007), leading to the suggestion
that comparatively high δ15N ratios in human bone col-
lagen reflects a primarily meat-based diet. A recent study
by Bogaard et al. (ibid.) has pointed out problems in this
method, as the crop husbandry method of manuring ce-
real crops raises the levels of δ15N in the cereals, thus re-
sembling a meat-based diet. Crop management practices,
therefore, will need to be factored in when investigating
ancient diet. The most direct evidence we have for ancient
practices of food consumption is still the actual remains of
food found in excavations, including the charred archaeo-
logical plants.
7. Conclusion: Inclusion of archaeo-
botanical studies in archaeological
research
Charred plant remains from archaeological deposits offer
a potentially valuable insight into past economic practices.
They are also not the only tool in palaeoeconomic investi-
gations, as results gained from archaeobotanical data may
be tied in with results from animal and human bone collec-
tions, phytoliths, and, in some parts of the Near East, pol-
len cores and Coleoptera. Palaeoeconomic studies should
therefore be considered in the preparation of the archaeo-
logical research agenda, they should be fully integrated
into the archaeological fieldwork from the beginning of
any project, and once fieldwork has been carried out, and
post-excavation lab and office work has begun for every-
one involved in the project, a steady and reliable informa-
tion flow between researchers should be kept up in order
to aid the archaeological interpretation and the publication
work.
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 Mette Marie Hald

Crop processing stage Purpose Method/equipment Plant composition pattern

breaking off straw and
Threshing animal hooves or stick for pounding no separation of plant parts
chaff from grain
wind: lighter plant parts (e.g., light by-product: straw, light chaff,
chaff and weed seeds) are carried to small light weed seeds
separating straw and
Winnowing the side by the wind while heavier
chaff from grain
parts (cereal grains and heavier chaff product: crop grains with heavy
and weeds) travel less distance weed seeds
separating large weed
coarse sieve: retains larger plant by-product: large weed seeds
seeds, seeds in heads and
Coarse sieving items while the threshed grains go product: crop grains with small
unthreshed ears from the
through mesh weed seeds
grain

by-product: small heavy weed

separating small weed fine sieve: retains the grains while seeds
Fine sieving
seeds from the grain small seeds go through mesh product: semi-clean crop grains
(before handsorting)

Table 1 - Summary of major crop processing stages, the products and by-products of which are most
likely to become charred.

Fig. 1 - Correspondence analysis plot with archaeobotanical samples represented as pie charts,
showing the relative proportions of weed seeds with varying flowering times in the samples. The plot
indicates that sample variation may be related to early- vs. late-flowering species, which ties in with
crop growing conditions such as the use of irrigation or fallowing (after Hald 2008).

228
 The use of archaeobotanical assemblages in palaeoeconomic reconstructions

Fig. 2 - Archaeological samples of charred plant remains analysed alongside modern samples from
ethnographically known crop processing stages. The plot shows that the archaeological samples
mostly resemble fine sieving by-products (after Hald 2008).

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