Carbonised Cereals from Grooved Ware Contexts

Extract

In their report of Durrington Walls, Wainwright and Longworth (1971) comment ‘It is noteworthy that not one certain grain impression has been recorded on any Grooved Ware sherds, nor is there any other evidence for the cultivation of cereals’. They conclude that the economy of Grooved Ware cultures is based on pastoralism and strandlooping rather than agriculture, and this conclusion has been generally accepted. Two points may be raised about this conclusion. First, the absence of grain impressions need not imply the absence of cereal cultivation. Hubbard (1975) has convincingly argued that the occurrence of pottery impressions does not provide the representative picture of crop economy suggested by Jessen and Helbaek (1944, 28). Such variables as the nature of the refuse deposited in the potter's working area and the degree of cleanliness required by the potter in his work will strongly influence the occurrence of impressions. For example, Hubbard has suggested that the sharp decrease in the frequency of impressions of emmer wheat in the Bronze Age may reflect its careful storage for human consumption, in contrast to barley which, as animal feed, would be more likely to get scattered around the site and incorporated into pottery.

The second point concerns the apparent absence of carbonised grain. This may be an illusory consequence of inadequate methods of retrieval in the field. Over the last decade, the use of water flotation has demonstrated that carbonised grain and seeds are many times more common than had previously been thought (Jones 1978).