In this post I'm going to summarize the
work of identification of vegetal non-woody macro remains from the so-called
“Battaglia excavations” (1937) in Ledro lake pile dwelling (Tn,
Italy).
The materials are stored in the Museum of Anthropology of Padua and appear to be fairly
preserved. They are in most cases charred, rarely waterlogged. For
this reason the preservation status (and therefore also the
morphometric variation and the color) is not uniform.
The work of identification is
preliminary to future aDNA studies, in collaboration with Edmund Mach Foundation.
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| Some of the vegetal remains from Ledro at the Museum of Anthropology of Padua |
In
the autumn of 1929, when the level of Lake Ledro was appreciably
lower than usual, after thousands of years a lake-settlement
re-emerged into the light of day. Along the southern shores of the
lake a forest of wooden piles (10.000) broke the surface, bearing all
the marks of their long immersion. At first they were thought to
belong to some long-forgotten sluice built to control the level of
the lake, but soon they revealed to be the remains of the largest
prehistoric site to have been uncovered hitherto in Italy.
Then
the water-level rose once more and all was submerged, until the
drought of 1936-37 lowered significantly the level of the lake and
enabled further excavation to be undertaken. These are the
excavations known as “Battaglia”, from the surname of the
archaeological director.
These
first researches, made by the University and the archaeological
service of Padua, saw the continuation in years ‘50 and ‘60. In
the 80s, the Natural Science Museum of Trento realized campaigns of
excavations with techniques previously not available, following the
stratigraphic criteria and adopting scientific naturalistic
methodologies, that allowed the experts to agree in thinking 2,200 BC
to 1,350 BC the dates of these pile dwelling life.
For
our project (December 2014), the identification of macro
remains has been accomplished to the naked eyed and with the help of
a microscope for the difficult ones.
For
the comparison, illustrated volumes, paper and digital atlas (such as
the Digital Atlas of Economic Plants in Archaeology of the
Groningen Institute of
Archaeology – GIA,
University of Groningen
and of the Deutsches
Archäologisches Institut –
DAI, Berlin) have
been used.
In
the analysis, approximately 750 remains have been studied: 533
certain, 24 uncertain and 194 undetermined.
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| Summary table of the non-woody macro remains |
It is possibile to
observe a lot of edible plants, some of them cultivated, others wild.
Among the cultivated species we can recognize wheat (Triticum
monococcum/dicoccum L.)
and barley (Hordeum sp. L.).
Their seeds are really abundant (in some cases there are also
fragments of ears) and show signs of combustion.
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| Charred cereals |
Then there are fruits of hazels (Corylus avellana L.) and
oak/holm oak (Quercus sp.), certainly used in alimentation.
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| Hazels fruits |
There are also some fruits belonging to the family
Rosaceae, but it
wasn't possible to determine gender and species. The small size allow
to rule out the possibility of wild apple (Malus
domestica) and the spherical shape is not
suited to the wild pear (Pyrus communis L.)
reported by Battaglia in 1943. One of the most plausible hypothesis
is that it is Sorbus sp. L.
The
high presence of dogwood (Cornus Mas L.),
of which only a part seems to have been preserved at the Museum
(Battaglia wrote of an entire layer composed of these seeds, while
those remaining are only a hundred), does suggest its use in a
massive way in the food field. One hypothesis, with archaeological
and ethongraphic evidence, is that the dogwood was fermented to make
a low alcohoolic drink.
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| Dogwood seeds |
In addition to fruits and seeds, in the collection we
can find some galls of oak (Quercus sp.
L.). The gall, or cecidia,
is a malformation that may be due to several causes; these galls seem
to be originated by an insect, the Cynips
quercusfolii. These remains may have been
gathered by the lake-dwellers to derive the tannic acid, in which are
rich, a substance used in tanning.
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| Galls of Quercus sp. L. |
Extremely fascinating are
the plant remains identified as mixtures of cereals, a kind of
"dumplings" made by kneading a cereal flour coarsely
chopped. The morphology is rounded, the "nuggets" seem to
be made by flattening the mixture on the thumb and then cooked on hot
stones (another theory, proposed by botanist Della Fior in 1940,
which for now is to be considered merely hypothetical not being
proven by scientific analysis, is that the internal cavity is the
space for a filling of some kind).
The
aspect relating to the alimentary economy is really
meaningful, in particular the relationship between agricultural
practices and gathering of wild vegetables. We can assume a certain
balance in the use of both resources. Indeed, the environment offered
many food resources that were certainly exploited by the inhabitants.
The groups of herbaceous plants that characterize the wet grasslands
and ruderal sites still provide an alternative and complementary
source of food.
This
project has been also an opportunity to make the first tests on
geometric morphology techniques in archaeobotany using open-source
softwares as MorphoJ. In future we will try to develop and make
available these methodologies.
