Distinguishing food from fodder through the study of charred plant remains: an experimental approach to dung-derived chaff

Abstract

Distinguishing human food from fodder in the archaeobotanical record is a difficult task. These categories are culturally defined and, therefore, not obvious from the plant species represented in archaeological samples, while context, such as storage area or container is not necessarily distinctive for each category. While grain can be consumed as either human food or fodder, depending on the particular needs of a given society, chaff is less suitable for human consumption and more appropriate for other uses, one of which is fodder. Archaeobotanical assemblages from two Late Neolithic sites in northern Greece (Makriyalos and Makri) are dominated by glume-wheat chaff, often in association with fig seeds. This material may well represent the remains of dung, but it was not known if the cereal component was eaten by livestock or mixed with the dung to form dung cakes. Our contribution presents the results of an experiment involving the feeding of einkorn grain and chaff (whole and pounded spikelets) and figs to goats to investigate the effect of livestock digestion on plant material. The implications of this work for the interpretation of archaeobotanical assemblages that may derive from animal dung are considered using the Greek Neolithic assemblages.