Wallace, M. and Charles, M. (2013) What goes in does not always come out: The impact of the ruminant digestive system of sheep on plant material, and its importance for the interpretation of dung-derived archaeobotanical assemblages. Environmental Archaeology, 18 (1). 18 - 30. ISSN 1461-4103
Abstract
On archaeological sites where livestock dung was a major fuel source, plant material that survives digestion intact may well be preserved in the remnants of dung-fuelled fires. Preserved plant remains which were derived from dung relate to the diet of animals, and thus provide a way of investigating the agro-pastoral economies of the past. In order to improve our understanding of the taphonomic processes to which plant material is exposed to during digestion, we applied archaeobotanical methods to the analysis of dung from sheep fed a known diet of cereal and wild plant material. Two clear patterns emerge from these investigations. First, cereal material (grain or chaff) survives digestion poorly and was rarely found in the dung analysed. Second, large proportions of seeds of various wild species survive digestion in an identifiable form, probably due to their small size and/or protective coating. These findings are crucial for reliable interpretation of dung-derived plant material in archaeological settings.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © Association for Environmental Archaeology 2013. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Environmental Archaeology. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Archaeobotany; Dung; Ruminant digestion; Livestock; Glume wheats; Barley; Wild plants; Fuel; Taphonomy |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > Department of Archaeology (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 22 Jan 2016 16:17 |
Last Modified: | 08 Mar 2016 23:48 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/1461410313Z.00000000022 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Maney Publishing |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1179/1461410313Z.00000000022 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:92821 |