Processed cereals and pulses from the late bronze age site of akrotiri, thera; preparations prior to consumption: A preliminary approach to their study

Annual of the British School at Athens

Volumn 96, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 27-40

  Sarpaki, Anaya ^a  

^a NONE   (Greece)

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EID: 80054642652     PISSN: 00682454     EISSN: 20452403     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0068245400005219     Document Type: Article

References (28)

1. This is a more general problem pertaining to environmental archaeology when the collection of bioarchaeological material is not integrated into the archaeological excavation programme. Very often excavators collect only what they can see by eye, whereas the data are nearly always not visible by naked eye, especially under the conditions of the field. This is why sampling is conducted, in order to counteract the invisibility of much of this category of data. A. Sarpaki, ‘The study of palaeodiet in the Aegean: food for thought’, in S. J. Vaughan and W. D. E. Coulson (eds), Palaeodiet in the Aegean (Oxford, 2000), 115-21.
2. The hue is even less visible when the cereal flour is produced from hulled grains (e.g. hulled barley) as there are glume impurities, often silicified and/or mineralized, which mask the darker colour difference.
3. The parts of the cereal grain that turns into flour when ground.
4. Water flotation of material thought of as flour would be detrimental to it as most of the fine silicified and/or mineralized glume parts would disintegrate and would be washed away together with the ‘flour’ itself. The only way to save this material is to collect it en masse and study it as it is (unwashed) under the microscope.
5. They are visible only when large quantities are available.
6. This work was centred on the questions of the beginnings of agriculture; the role of plants for investigating human behaviour was hardly touched upon.
7. It is common for excavators to find organic remains near metal objects, especially copper/bronze, but also stones with a high lime content have also been known to mineralize textiles. This last example has been detected at Akrotiri. Moreover, at the site, other modes of preservation persist, silicification, for certain plant parts such as awns, glumes, and sometimes embryos of cereals.
8. A. Sarpaki, ‘The palaeoethnobotanical study of the West House, Akrotiri, Thera’, BSA 87 (1992), 219-30; ead., ‘Small fields or big fields? This is the question’, in D. A. Hardy (eds), Thera and the Aegean World, ii (London, 1992), 422-32.
9. For a more extensive discussion on this point see Sarpaki 1992 (n. 9), 423 n. 9.
10. Hearths are not included as a source, because seed were preserved in storage pottery.
11. Some experiments have already been conducted for understanding the processing of cereals in the cultures of first farmers in Central Europe, such as for the Linear Pottery Culture (LBK or Linear Bandkeramik), J. Meurers Balke and J. Lüning, ‘Experimente zur Verarbeitung von Spelzgetreuiden’, in M. Fansa, B. Renken, and J. Döring (eds), Experimentelle Archäologie in Deutschland (Oldenburg, 1990), 93-112. See also iid., ‘Some aspects and experiments concerning the processing of glume wheats’, in P. Anderson (ed.), Préhistoire de l'agriculture: nouvelles approches expérmentales et ethnographiques (Paris, 1992), 341-62. Another interesting article on experiments in milling is M. Währen, ‘Brote und Getreidebrei von Twann aus dem 3. Jahrtausend vor Christus’, Archéology suisse, 7. 1 (1984), 2-6 see too id., Brot und Gebäck im Leben und Glauben des Alten Orients (Bern, 1967).
12. C. Dickinson, ‘Experimental processing and cooking of emmer and spelt wheats and the Roman army diet’, in D. Robertson (ed.), Experimentation and Reconstruction in Environmental Archaeology (Oxford, 1990), 33-9; ead., ‘The identification of cereals from ancient bran fragments’, Circaea, 4(2), 95-102.
13. See reference from previous note.
14. Meurers-Balke and Lüning 1992 (n. 13); Yialouri (n. 15); Foxhall and Forbes (n. 15); Dickinson 1990 (n. 14); Hillman (n. 15).
15. e.g. Hillman (n. 15); id., ‘Interpretation of ancient plant remains: the application of ethnographic models from Turkey’, in W. van Zeist and W. A. Casparie (eds), Plants and Ancient Man: Studies in Palaeoethnobotany (Rotterdam, 1984), 141; id., ‘Traditional husbandry and processing of archaic cereals in recent times, part II: the free-threshing cereals’, Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture, 2 (1985), 1-31; G. E.Jones, ‘Interpretations of archaeological plant remains: ethnographic models from Greece’, in van Zeist and Casparie, Meurers-Balke and Lüning 1992. 43-61.
16. Generally speaking ‘bulgur’ is understood as cracked wheat but here we refer to it as cracked barley too.
17. Fava (legume meal) is detected when studying the cracked pulses under a stereoscope microscope and recording that the cotyledons are split into two, the testa is missing, but the cotyledons are bruised in such a way (fragments broken off) as is detectable from the mechanical damage affecting them during excavation. Very often, when pulses are stored whole but charring destroys the testa, some cotyledons still continue to be attached to each other―often with fragments of testa adhering to them―but most important is the fact that the cotyledons are not cracked, especially when they are stored in pottery.
18. Pulse flour is identifiable from fava as being crushed legumes very finely ground but still detectable under a microscope.
19. In this room were found the lively Spring Fresco and many cooking vessels (see Ch. Doumas, The Wall Paintings of Thera (Athens, 1992); A. Sarpaki, ‘Plants chosen to be depicted on Theran wall paintings: tentative interpretations’, in S. Sherratt (ed.), The Wall Paintings of Thera (Athens, 2000), 657-80, esp. 659-60). See also the fairly numerous samples of flour found in that room (TABLE 1).
20. Devetzi (n. 18), 125. These are not typical quernstones and are more elaborate and decorative, but it is interesting to note that the flour of room 6 was also found in the same room.
21. At Akrotiri, understandably, benches have only been found on ground floors.
22. J. Hansen, ‘Palaeoethnobotany and palaeodiet in the Aegean region: notes on legume toxicity and related pathologies’, in Vaughan and Coulson (n. 2), 13-27, and esp. 22-3. Although some scholars claim that forms of cooking involving high temperatures appear to deprive the Lathyrus spp. of their harmful effects, yet others insist that neurolathyrism was still present in some frequency amongst people who were roasting and boiling and making legume flour. Fava beans seem to have been eaten in small quantity at Akrotiri, so there is no reason to discuss the problem of favism, caused by these legumes.
23. It is well known that storage of flour is not viable for long periods of time, as either insects and/or mosses attack it, or it becomes mouldy. We know that cereals and legumes are preserved better and longer if the seed is not bruised (and for legumes if it preserves its testa); if not ground/pounded they can be stored for periods of 1-2 years.
24. L. G. Allbaugh, Crete: A Case Study of an Underdeveloped Area (Princeton, NJ, 1953).
25. A. Sarpaki, ‘Bread in the Aegean in prehistory’, paper delivered at the XIII International Congress of Prehistory and Protohistoric Sciences, Forlî, Italy, 8-14 September 1996 (forthcoming), Abstracts, 1. 63-4. The ‘breads’ of Akrotiri are under study by the present author together with Delwen Samuel.
26. Emmer has been found in very small numbers so far, and always as a contaminant within other crop plants.
27. Fava has already been found at LBA Thebes, sec G. Jones, ‘An early find of “fava” from Thebes’, BSA 88 (1993), 103-4; bulgur was also found at the prehistoric settlement of Mesimeriani Toumba (Thrace); pers. comm. by T. Valamoti, who is studying the material (forthcoming).
28. I have started microscopic examination of the amorphous substances which seem to come from plant remains; for convenience they have been termed ‘bread’. So, for our present purpose, ‘bread’ is the term used for an organic material (plant) made into a dough.