Seeds from a medieval sewer in Woolster Street, Plymouth

Abstract

Ever since the work of the Swiss a century ago on the Lake Dwellers (1), economy and diet have been a valid if somewhat neglected part of archaeological investigation. Often, however, the lack of well preserved plant remains is a serious gap in our knowledge. The relevance of archaeological techniques to medieval studies is now realized, for supplementing the data from excavations by documentary evidence and vice versa. A well preserved medieval site could, therefore, be relevant in a wider context, as suggesting the range of information that might be expected under good conditions of preservation. In 1965-6, excavations undertaken by the Ministry of Public Building and Works and the Plymouth City Museum uncovered a large medieval building in Woolster Street near the present harbour. Built on reclaimed land, this building incorporated within it a covered drain, of which 65 feet were excavated (Fig. 1). As the site was waterlogged throughout, material was very well preserved and included large amounts of faunal and artifactual remains and-of chief interest here-seeds. There were three layers within the drain: a bottom coarse and sandy deposit, covered by a thin, finer layer and capped by an extremely fine and sticky deposit. Each deposit was washed through a 5 mm sieve on the site for artifactual and organic material. In addition, soil samples were taken from each layer, and an untreated 4 cwt of the upper matrix was collected for later analysis. From this came all the seeds in the upper layer, which were collected by wet-sieving a series of samples from various parts of the drain through a 0.6 and 1.2 mm sieve. Within each layer, the material appeared to be randomly distributed. However, as Table I shows, the seed content of each layer was quite different. Indeed, the only species common to