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Cereal chaff used as temper in loom-weights: new evidence from a Slovenian Eneolithic pile-dwelling site (ca. 3100 cal bc)

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Abstract

We present new evidence of the intentional use of cereal by-products at Stare gmajne, an Eneolithic pile-dwelling site in Slovenia, dated approximately 3160–3100 cal bc. The chaff material, which had been used for tempering, was discovered inside one of the largest discovered loom-weights and analysed. Clay, which was used by the dwellers to make the weight, was tempered with cereal chaff to reinforce it. The practice of tempering, not necessarily for loom weights, has already been proven for earlier settlements, mostly in arid areas where firewood, grazing and building material were scarce. However, tempering has rarely been found in European prehistoric sites. More than 1,800 carbonised and half-carbonised, excellently preserved and well identifiable cereal plant macroremains in less than 1 l of waterlogged clayey material were sorted and counted. Among the recognized plant macroremains, barley rachis fragments and glume wheat (emmer and einkorn) by-products such as spikelet forks and glume bases prevailed. A few grains were also found. Cultivation of the main crops of emmer, einkorn and barley at Slovenian Eneolithic pile-dwelling sites was confirmed again. Among the chaff, a new “strange type” of Triticum dicoccum (emmer) spikelet forks was discovered. The size of the weight and the intentional local use of cereal by-products as temper suggest that late Neolithic (Eneolithic) pile-dwelling societies all around the Alps were highly organized and developed due to expansion of crop production and processing.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Janez Dirjec for the discovery and helping with sorting and counting the cereal chaff. The research was funded by the Slovenian Research Agency for the project: Prehistoric pile-dwelling settlements on the Ljubljansko barje, Slovenia: chronology, culture and palaeoenvironment (L6-4157). Many thanks also to Dragotin Valoh for preparing the figures.

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  1. ZRC SAZU, Institute of Archaeology, Novi trg 2, 1000, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Tjaša Tolar & Anton Velušček

  2. Department of Environmental Sciences, Institute of Prehistory and Archaeological Science IPAS, Basel University, Spalenring 145, 4055, Basel, Switzerland

    Stefanie Jacomet

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  1. Tjaša Tolar
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  2. Stefanie Jacomet
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Correspondence to Tjaša Tolar.

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Communicated by F. Bittmann.

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Tolar, T., Jacomet, S. & Velušček, A. Cereal chaff used as temper in loom-weights: new evidence from a Slovenian Eneolithic pile-dwelling site (ca. 3100 cal bc). Veget Hist Archaeobot 25, 291–301 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-015-0549-4

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