Anthracology

New charcoal identifications are reported from the archaeological site, Sibudu Cave, KwaZulu-Natal. From six layers dated 77,000 to 65,000 years ago, 617/769 specimens were identified to 54 different woody taxa and of these 37 were identified to species level. The wood bundles are mostly from taxa suitable as fuel (including tinder); to a lesser extent there is wood from plants that may have been collected for medicinal purposes. The woody taxa in combustion features vary spatially, suggesting that specific wood may have been collected for predetermined purposes. Low and medium-density wood occurs in the combustion features more often than high-density wood and this supports previous studies which concluded that moderate fire temperatures were desired and that people deliberately selected wood types to achieve such temperatures. Identified woody taxa are from evergreen forest and savanna or cliff scrub vegetation communities so a mosaic of habitats is implied. Trees such as "Afrocarpus/Podocarpus", "Ptaeroxylon obliquum", "Buxus macowanii", "Harpephyllum caffrum" and "Curtisia dentata" belong to forest, "Searsia" spp. to the forest margins, and "Protea caffra" and "Erica caffra" to cliff scrub. Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 5a and 4 are represented in the 77,000 to 65,000-year-old occupations at Sibudu and during the cooler conditions that probably existed in MIS4 the numbers of deciduous genera increased together with taxa diversity, possibly implying that both the forest and forest margins expanded. Numbers of evergreen genera remained constant through time. Keywords: Marine Isotope Stages 5a and 4; anthracology; fuelwood; medicinal wood; vegetation change

"Le genêt d’Espagne n’est actuellement qu’une plante sauvage, omniprésente dans les friches de notre région. Pourtant - les plus anciens d’entre nous s’en souviennent - il y a un peu plus d’un demi-siècle, ce même genêt était récolté pour produire des fibres textiles.
Ce fut alors la dernière phase d’une vieille activité artisanale typique du Lodévois, pratiquée, avant le XIXe siècle, dans quelques localités centrées sur les vallées de la Lergue et du Salagou.
Dans ce livre, des spécialistes de diverses disciplines mettent en évidence l’histoire des usages et des techniques autour du genêt à différentes époques. Car en plus de la fabrication de fil et de linge, la plante servait aussi à nourrir le bétail et, plus généralement, à valoriser les terrains les plus médiocres."

L’obiettivo del presente lavoro è quello di utilizzare l’indagine archeobotanica, effettuata sui semi/frutti e resti di tessuto legnoso combusto provenienti dalle fasi bassomedievali dei siti di San Lorenzo in Carminiano e Pantano, per definire le modalità dello sfruttamento della risorsa naturale da parte delle comunità umane tra XIII e XIV secolo e allo stesso tempo identificare i caratteri dei modelli produttivi adottati. Sulla base degli elementi sinora raccolti, possiamo affermare che, sebbene il processo di ruralizzazione sia stato esteso anche ad aree incolte, mediante l’impianto o la riqualificazione di vigneti, oliveti e frutteti, i caratteri dell’ambiente naturale siano stati parzialmente preservati. L’esistenza di querceti e boschi riparali fornisce conferma della presenza di una discreta copertura arborea nella zona e del suo sfruttamento controllato che si inserisce a pieno titolo nel complesso delle attività produttive dell’area. Complessivamente, tali attività privilegiarono la cerealicoltura estensiva, soprattutto quella basata sull’orzo e sul grano.

The iron and steel industry was the emblem of the industrial revolution in the 19th and early 20th century United States, playing an important role in shaping the nation’s transportation infrastructure, the industrial specialization of its cities, and its rise as an economic and military power. Iron is an abundant but generally non-renewable natural resource that must be extracted, concentrated, and processed to create a useable and merchantable product such as pig iron, wrought iron, or steel. All steps in iron and steel production – from mining to smelting - may incur some impact to the environment. The scope and scale of environmental impact of the iron and steel industry in the 19th century mirrored changes in mining technology – from quarry to open-pit mining - shifts in fuels used in ore smelting – from charcoal to coal and coke – and developments in transportation – from wagon roads to canals and railroads. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, government and industry response to air and water pollution by the iron and steel industries spurred the development of agencies and legislation to control industrial pollution.

This three day collaborative workshop sponsored by The University of Queensland and The University of Western Australia is the first of two events aiming to foster interest in tropical archaeobotany and improve the practical skill base in archaeobotany of archaeologists working in the tropical zone, especially across Australasia and the Pacific. With ever increasing interest in issues surrounding long-term environmental change, anthropogenic environmental impacts, subsistence practice and food security, archaeobotany has huge and largely untapped potential in the region’s archaeological and palaeoenvironmental research. A recent survey of working archaeologists shows that “floral studies” are a recognised skills gap in Australia and the new initiative, building on the 2009 ANGA event, hopes to help correct that deficiency.

This first workshop will begin with a discussion of the issues confronting our discipline 3 years on from ANGA, followed by direct training in the identification of seeds, fruits, leaves and non-woody stems by Andrew Fairbairn. We will be using the newly refurbished archaeology labs and will be especially focusing on techniques to help improve field collection and recognition of macrofossil remains.
Contact: [email protected]

Coriander Coriandrum sativum L. is an annual plant of the carrot family (Apiaceae), cultivated for its important aromatic and medicinal properties. The fresh green parts of the plant are characterized by a strong smell resembling the smell of bed bugs. This article looks at a certain image of the plant by presenting the main characteristics of its biology, taxonomy, morphology and by evoking main aspects of its cultivation and its use as spice, condiment and medicinal plant. The etymology of the name and its occurrence in classical sources and in medieval and early modern herbals and spice books are indicated. The archaeobotanical finds of eastern France, starting at the Younger Iron Age and ending in the early modern period, are presented and discussed in chronological order. Since the younger Iron Age and during all the periods and cultures following, Coriander has been amongst one the most important spices and medicinal plants. It was cultivated and appreciated by Man as shown by written sources and archaeo-botanical finds.

Keywords: Coriandrum sativum, condiments, younger Iron Age, Gallo-Roman period, Middle Ages, eastern France

"The ancient Roman economy is an area of research which has increasingly been illuminated by the application of scientific methods to archaeological questions. In Pompeii in particular, various studies have been presented to provide evidence for the scale of trade on local and regional bases.  Among these studies one significant aspect of economic activity has been largely overlooked.  The contribution of raw wood and wood charcoal as the major energy sources to fuel the ancient economy has rarely received attention, much less a detailed examination.  Using data from four sites in Pompeii (ca. 3rd c. B.C. to A.D. 79), archaeological wood charcoal fragments collected spatially and temporally, and identified as to wood type, are expressly used to reconstruct the fuel economy of the city by synthesizing available historical, archaeological and ecological data.  The results have allowed the proposal of a base quantitative model for assessing the size of the fuel economy in Pompeii at A.D. 79. This approach could ultimately be useful for synthesizing results for the city of Rome and the greater Roman world in general."

De nombreux chercheurs étudient la culture rubanée dont les traditions céramiques, lithiques et architecturales sont
aujourd’hui bien connues. Paradoxalement, le milieu végétal dans lequel arrivèrent, vers 5200 av. J.-C, les premiers
agro-pasteurs sédentaires d’Europe nord-occidentale, ainsi que leur économie végétale, ont été peu étudiés.
Neuf sites de Moyenne-Belgique ont fait l’objet d’analyses anthracologiques et carpologiques. Le peuplement
humain de la région s’est effectué en au moins deux étapes. A leur arrivée, les Rubanés ont exploité les principaux
constituants de la chênaie-frênaie : le chêne, le frêne et le noisetier. Lors de la seconde étape d’occupation, la
collecte en bois de feu s’est diversifiée et s’est orientée vers les lisières forestières composées des prunoïdées, du
sureau et surtout des pomoïdées (aubépines, pommiers...). Ainsi, les assemblages anthracologiques distinguent
les occupations «pionnières» des occupations «secondaires» et sont associés, pour chacune d’elle, à un mobilier
archéologique caractéristique. L’anthracologie indique un mode d’exploitation de la forêt original et se révèle
un véritable outil de chronologie relative au même titre que les décors de la céramique et la matière première
lithique. Les principales plantes cultivées par les Néolithiques sont d’origine proche-orientale. Il s’agit des blés vêtus
(amidonnier, engrain), des légumineuses (pois, lentille) et du lin. Le pavot somnifère est bien implanté dans la région.
Le consensus repose, pour le moment, sur une origine méditerranéenne de la plante. Cependant, la rareté des
découvertes de pavot en Méditerranée occidentale antérieures à celles d’Europe nord-occidentale tend à réviser ce
consensus. Au même titre que la culture matérielle et les éléments architecturaux rubanés, la carpologie témoigne
d’une économie agricole homogène sur une zone allant de la région rhénane au Bassin parisien, mais révèle aussi des
contacts extra-culturels et des particularités régionales concernant notamment les principales céréales cultivées.

Starting from 2003, several archaeobotanical campaigns have been carried out on the Ebla site, NW Syria, in order to shed light on the use of plants between the Early Bronze Age IIIa and Middle-Late Bronze Age. The results of the anthracological analysis,  here  presented  for  the  first  time,  following  a  continuous  chronological  pattern,  reveal  changes  in  plants  exploitation according  to  cultural  aspects,  functions  of  use  and  climate.  Several  contexts  were  investigated  and  the  anthracological  analysis
shows changes in the use of wood between the Early and Middle-Late Bronze Age. Wood species found in the EBA Royal palace G
were,  for  the  major  part,  beams  and  poles  of  Cedrus  and  Abies  employed  as  carpentry.  In  the  same  layers  luxury  artefacts  of
Pomoideae, Fraxinus sp. and Olea wood were found. More complex is the picture that results from the study of material coming from
M/LBA phases due to the variety of contexts investigated. The anthracological analysis, carried out on private houses, cooking ovens (type  tannurs),  dumps  and  ritual  wells,  has  revealed,  indeed,  a  complex  pattern  of  wood  exploitation  which  varied  according  to cultural habits and natural resources.

FUEL AND FIRE IN THE ANCIENT ROMAN WORLD
Fuel is an area of research within studies of the ancient economy and the ancient environment that is relatively new. The size of the Roman fuel economy in the Mediterranean must have been large as fuel was required every day for domestic cooking and heating, and to fuel most industries.  This colloquium will employ a multi-disciplinary approach incorporating researchers with a variety of backgrounds from archaeology, science, history, technology and ethnography. We seek to define and expand the current state of research in the chaîne operatoire of industrial and domestic production technologies that utilised fuel, and to establish a fresh blueprint for examining the ancient fuel economy.
Sessions will encompass:
1) The science and history of fuel (both raw wood and charcoal fuel).  Questions shall include whether raw wood or charcoal fuel were used, in what quantities, and for which types of activity.
2) Kiln-based industries, such as pottery, glass and metal production, and their technology with respect to fuel will be examined. Archaeological and ethnographic studies will be complemented by scientific analyses to examine kiln temperatures and different types of fuels used.
3) The urban use of fuel, in particular, the preparation of food and heating of rooms and baths, as well as the use of food as fuel (for example, of olive oil consumption for lighting).
Papers will be presented at the Sainsbury Lecture Theatre, at the British School at Rome on Friday 8th and at the Villa Lante, the Finnish Institute of Rome, on Saturday morning of the 9th March, 2013. Open discussion will be encouraged after each session and will form an integral part of this conference, which will be open to the public and free of charge. William V Harris (Columbia) will give the keynote address at 6pm, Thursday 8th March at the BSR. 
Organised by: Dr Robyn Veal (University of Cambridge), Dr Victoria Leitch (University of Leicester), and sponsored by the British School at Rome and the Oxford Roman Economy Project.  For more information contact: [email protected] or [email protected].  A link will soon be available on the BSR website with a full list of speakers and program details: www.bsr.ac.uk/news/coming-up.

To study and to represent space-time evolution of the Armorican vegetation (N-W  France) since the end of the last glaciation, a method using cartographic (GIS) and statistical tools was developed. This work involved the recording of 150000 spatial data (archeobotanic, geographical, geological, archaeological…) and analysis methods were developed.  Thus, for each period we tried to obtain :

    layout trends of the archeobotanic data (e.g. krigeage of the AP),
    space correlations between palaeo-environmental parameters and human activities,
    global studies of the archeobotanic and abiotic data thanks to multivariate analysis.

To promote the archeobotanic results, past-vegetation reconstitutions of three sites with natural or cultural patrimonial vocations were integrated in landscape planning projects.

La reconstrucción de la dieta de un grupo de habitantes de un pequeño
conjunto residencial de la antigua ciudad de Palenque, a través de un análisis multiproxy, nos acerca a las relaciones establecidas al interior y al exterior de dicho grupo social. A través de los diferentes restos materiales recuperados podemos inferir una compleja red económica y social la cual reflejará la disposición y disponibilidad de diversas especies vegetales y animales para la alimentación.

This paper reviews the archaeobotanical record of the transition from foraging to farming in the southern Levant. The concise presentation of the published botanical evidence follows a critical assessment of: (a) the nature of Epipalaeolithic plant management strategies, (b) the place of the southern Levant in the polycentric development of Near Eastern plant cultivation and domestication, and (c) region-specific pathways for the emergence of domesticated crop ‘‘packages’’. Some inferences are drawn and suggestions are made concerning the potential contribution of archaeobotanical research to questions of broader archaeological significance about socio-economic change in the southern Levant during the Pre-pottery Neolithic.

The scale and nature of early cultivation are topics that have received relatively limited attention in research on the origins of agriculture. In Southwest Asia, one the earliest centers of origin worldwide, the transition to food production is commonly portrayed as a macroevolutionary process from hunter-gatherer through to cultivator-forager and farming stages. Climate change, resource intensification, sedentism, rising population densities, and increasing social complexity are widely considered by prehistorians as pivotal to the emergence of protoagricultural village life. In this paper we revisit these narratives that have been influenced by culture-history and social evolution, together forming the dominant theoretical paradigms in the prehistory of Southwest Asia. We propose a complementary contextual approach seeking to reconstruct the historical development of Early Holocene plant-food production and its manifold sociocultural environments by intersecting multiple lines of evidence on the biology of plant domestication, resource strategies, settlement patterns, cultivation and harvesting technologies, food storage, processing and consumption, ritual practices and symbolic behaviors. Furthermore, we propose that early plant-food production in Southwest Asia should be dissociated from ethnographically derived notions of sedentary village life. Plants emerge as important components of community interactions and ritual performances involving suprahousehold groups that were mediated through communal food consumption.

"In the Middle Ages honey hunting (Zeidlerei) was very important for the production of the consumer goods honey and wax. Suitable forests, usually named as Zeidelweiden in written sources, had to be protected and maintained. There often have been conflicts over the use with other economic activities in the forest. This paper presents first results of the archaeological, historical and palaeobotanical study of a building and its surrounding area in northern Bavaria which were used for different kinds of forest economy. Tools for honey hunting, place names and sources of law show the use of the complex for Zeidlerei in the 15th century. In the surrounding area, quarries and chains of ponds illuminate the transformation of the cultural landscape. Furthermore, a nearby fen enables a reconstruction of local vegetation since the Pleistocene.

Die Waldbienenhaltung (Zeidlerei) war im Mittelalter sehr bedeutend für die Gewinnung der Konsumgüter Honig und Wachs. Geeignete Wälder, in den Quellen meist als Zeidelweiden bezeichnet, mussten geschützt und gepflegt werden. Oft ergaben sich Nutzungskonflikte mit anderen waldwirtschaftlichen Tätigkeiten. Der vorliegende Beitrag präsentiert erste Ergebnisse der archäologisch-historischen und paläobotanischen Erforschung eines waldwirtschaftlich genutzten Gebäudes und seines Umlandes in der nördlichen Oberpfalz. Zeidlerwerkzeuge, Flurnamen und Rechtsquellen belegen für das 15. Jahrhundert eine Nutzung des Komplexes im Rahmen der Zeidlerei. Im Umfeld beleuchten Steinbrüche und Weiherketten die Umgestaltung der Kulturlandschaft. Ein angrenzendes Moor ermöglicht außerdem eine Rekonstruktion der lokalen Vegetationsentwicklung seit dem Pleistozän."

Most of the diachronic studies of settlement structure and density tend to argue about the limits in prehistoric resourcemanagement. Wood is by far the most important of the non-food materials in question. Pre-Iron Age periods are commonly
labelled as primitive and rural. This narrative is put to the test in this article.
After a brief account of all the available data on the ecology of Late Bronze Age eastern Bavaria, new data from Atting-“Aufeld”, district of Straubing-Bogen, is brought into the discussion (almost 900 wood fragments and 2800 botanical
finds).
Then some estimates regarding the amount of fuelwood and timber for production and building needed across all economic activities in every single Urnfield culture household are given. At this time, wood was essential in more fields
than just cooking, heating and construction. There is evidence for intensive use of wood in ritual too, e.g. burial and certain types of sacrifice.
The state of research for the Urnfield culture in eastern Bavaria and the district of Straubing-Bogen is very good. Longterm fieldwork, comprising surveys and rescue excavations and a reasonable corpus of published graves and dwellings
provide data which allow us to re-asses the area needed for agriculture and forestry in prehistoric times. The distribution of contemporary settlements seems to get denser around 1000 BC and the sizes of the dwellings increase. This
demographic explosion is even more apparent when considering the graves. The semi-quantitative analysis of the 3700 graves dating between Bz D and Ha B recovered in the Upper Palatinate and Lower Bavaria shows a definitive rise in
the number of cremated individuals in the latter part of the period. If one puts all this evidence together, it suggests that deforestation could have been an issue at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. For these reasons, I propose the possibility
of fully planned prehistoric forest management, or maybe even log driving, before the onset of iron technology.
As far as archaeology goes, many questions remain concerning the investigation of prehistoric features. These can be answered by physical geography (more data on colluvia), biology (detailed data on pollensums, physical anthropology,
anthracology, tree-ring analysis, archaeozoology and so on) and other related fields (ethnology, experimental archaeology).
The reconstruction of prehistoric landuse and exploitation patterns will greatly profit from future collaborations.

We review and evaluate human adaptations during the last glacial-interglacial climatic transition in southwest Asia. Stable isotope data imply that climatic change was synchronous across the region within the limits of dating uncertainty. Changes in vegetation, as indicated from pollen and charcoal, mirror step-wise shifts between cold-dry and warm-wet climatic conditions, but with lag effects for woody vegetation in some upland and interior areas. Palaeoenvironmental data can be set against regional archaeological evidence for human occupancy and economy from the later Epipalaeolithic to the aceramic Neolithic. Demographic change is evaluated from summed radiocarbon date probability distributions , which indicating contrasting and in some cases opposite-population trajectories in different regions. Abrupt warming transitions at ~14.5 and 11.7 ka BP may have acted as pacemakers for rapid cultural change in some areas, notably at the start of the Natufian and Pre-Pottery Neolithic cultures. However temporal synchroneity does not mean that climatic changes had the same environmental or societal consequences in different regions. During cold-dry time intervals, regions such as the Levant acted as refugia for plant and animal resources and human population. In areas where socio-ecological continuity was maintained through periods of adverse climate (e.g. Younger Dryas) human communities were able to respond rapidly to subsequent climatic improvement. By contrast, in areas where there was a break in settlement at these times (e.g. central Anatolia), populations were slower to react to the new opportunities provided by the interglacial world.

This thesis develops our understanding of changing patterns of woodland resource use during the Bronze and Iron Age of central Anatolia. The central Anatolian region is characterised by an anthropogenic landscape, a product of millennia of use by foragers and farmers, including intensive exploitation in recent millennia for agropastoralism. For all its societies, mobile or sedentary, wood was a key resource, used for fuel, construction, and craft materials. During the Bronze and Iron Ages, highly sophisticated and urbanised agropastoral societies developed across central Anatolia, including the regionally significant Hittite Empire. However, our understanding of woodland use, structure and management in the period is poorly developed. Here I investigate Bronze and Iron Age wood exploitation by examining how the inhabitants of Kaman-Kalehöyük (Kırşehir Province, Turkey) utilised the woodland around the site during over an approximately 1,700-year span of occupation from c 2,000-300 cal BC.
The expectation arising from this social milieu is that woodland must have competed for space with agricultural lands and that the increasing pressures urbanism and centralised control of grain supply would have resulted in deforestation of the local woodland surrounding agricultural production sites such as Kaman-Kalehöyük.  To interrogate this hypothesis, this study applies wood charcoal analysis (anthracology) to investigate woodland structure, use, and management, generating the first large scale, diachronic anthracological investigation from central Anatolia from this period. The investigation includes taxonomic identification and quantification of wood charcoal along with dendrological examination of the dominant taxon, deciduous oak (Quercus spp.) and ecological and behavioural approaches are used to interpret the results. The data are examined and compared to environmental proxies such as pollen data and other anthracological investigations along with climate records relating to the region. Further, the analysis is situated in the social, cultural, and economic landscape that existed during the Bronze and Iron Age periods. The analysis is presented as a thesis including several publications with additional text to provide a detailed account of the project rationale, background, and to draw the discussion together.
The taxonomic data show that the dominant taxon, oak, was in use for the entirety of the study period and peaked in use during the Late Bronze Age Hittite Empire occupation. The peak in oak use was immediately followed by a spike in pine (Pinus spp.) and an increase in the number of taxa exploited from the Early Iron Age onwards. Complementary dendrological results also indicate that the Late Bronze Age showed dominant use of large trees, including trunk and root wood. When behaviourally specific modelling was incorporated, the results show that the inhabitants of all occupation phases selected the wood most frequent in the landscape with little attention to other variables such as distance, fuel value, and construction value. However, when compared to the regional pollen data, the Kaman-Kalehöyük wood data differ, especially when related to pine, leading to the possibility that despite intensive use of oak woodland on the plain surrounding the site, pine forests were avoided until the demise of the Hittites. Consequently, we do not see the deforestation event expected within this period of rapidly changing social structure. Rather, we see specific occupation periods linked to unique signatures of woodland use. 
This study shows the value of combining taxonomic and dendrological analyses along with OFT modelling to gain a more comprehensive and detailed picture of past woodland resource use by demonstrating clear changes in woodland acquisition that are synchronous with changes in occupation at the site. Each of these changes, in turn, offer a unique insight into the decision-making practices of the inhabitants of Kaman-Kalehöyük filling a conspicuous void in our knowledge of the region for the study period.

Fire in the World of Waters: anthracology at the Hatahara Site, Central Amazon

The refinement on the acquisition of paleoenvironmental and paleoethnobotanical data through the analysis of botanical vestiges has a great importance for Amazonian Archaeology due to the fact that it may provide concrete evidences on the relationship between Man and
environment, as well as data on eventual natural or non natural environmental changes.  As such, an interdisciplinary approach is essential, starting from questions relevant to the archaeology of the region, combined with specific approaches for the analisys of botanical
vestiges in archaeological contexts. Despite the fact that preservation of plant fragments on amazonian sites is scarce, the preservation potential is enhanced through carbonization, which can be atested by the great quantity of charcoal present in various archaeological sites in the Central Amazon. This work presents the results of an analysis of carbonized botanical macro vestiges from the Hatahara Site (AM) and demonstrates how proficuous is the approach of fire, materialized on archaeological charcoal, to the compreehension of the influence exerted
on the vegetation throughout time by the ancient inhabitants of Hatahara.