The effect of dehusking on cereals: experimentation for archaeobotanical comparison

  1. Alonso Martínez, Natalia
  2. Ferran ANTOLÍN
  3. Daniel LÓPEZ
  4. Francisco José CANTERO
  5. Prats Ferrando, Georgina
Proceedings:
XXXIIIe RENCONTRES INTERNATIONALES D’ARCHÉOLOGIE ET D’HISTOIRE D’ANTIBESÉditions APDCA – Antibes – 2013

Publisher: Éditions APDCA

Year of publication: 2013

Pages: 155-168

Type: Conference paper

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Abstract

Archaeobotanical investigations on several archaeological sites have been used to set apattern of the fragmentation of cereal grains and chaff remains (nodes and rachis seg-ments, spikelets and glume bases) prior to charring. Such a pattern could be the resultof threshing activities as well as the dehusking practice of hulled cereals. During this firstexperimentation, the effect of the latter is evaluated, considering the possible pre-treat-ment of the grains (“fresh”, soaked, toasted), the type of action that is conducted (millingor pounding) and the tool used (wooden mortar, stone mortar, pit, saddle quern, rotaryquern). The analyzed cereals are 2-rowed and 6-rowed hulled barley, emmer and einkorn