What is it about?
Fat-hen seeds are the most common finds in archaeological sites, unfortunately frequently only being a modern contamination, a part of a soil seed bank. The seeds are black or dark brown when fresh and black (or dark brown) when charred. Fat-hen is a common, fast growing weed and also an edible plant, cultivated in some areas. The paper should help to divide charred from uncharred seeds and demonstrates an importance of the plant in northern margins of the early Neolithic in Europe. The age of the seeds is confirmed by AMS readiocarbon date.
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Why is it important?
We try to know what peaople use ages ago and how it was in time of appearance of agriculture in new areas. When we sort out rests of economically important plant remains just in case - because there is a possibility that some (or all) of them are not as old as the studied archaeological layer... Radiocarbon dates are helpful but very expensive. It is better to send to a 14C lab well recognised specimens and the paper should help.
Perspectives
It opens a new page in the neolithisation process knowledge, including a use of local resources (gathering) and probability of cultivation of a larger spectrum of plants than the typical members of the 'crop package'.
dr Aldona Mueller-Bieniek
Polska Akademia Nauk
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Chenopodium Seeds in Open-Air Archaeological Sites – How to Not Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater, Environmental Archaeology, October 2018, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/14614103.2018.1536500.
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