G. Hillman et al., IDENTIFYING PROBLEMATIC REMAINS OF ANCIENT PLANT FOODS - A COMPARISONOF THE ROLE OF CHEMICAL, HISTOLOGICAL AND MORPHOLOGICAL CRITERIA, World archaeology, 25(1), 1993, pp. 94-121
The paper explores the problems of isolating criteria for use in ident
ifying ancient remains of plant foods, and the possibility of using ch
emical residues in this role. It first discusses factors affecting the
choice of such chemical criteria, and the taxonomic framework within
which all chemical, morphological and histological criteria have to be
assessed and applied. It then outlines three examples of the way in w
hich criteria of all three types have been used by our research group
in identifying archaeologically critical remains of foods plants from
Late Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and early Neolithic sites in the Near Ea
st.