What is Archaeobotany?

Jul, 2017

By Dr Melissa Rosenzweig

What is Archaeobotany?

Archaeobotany is a sub-specialization within environmental archaeology that studies human interactions with plants in the past. There are several approaches to recovering plant remains in archaeological contexts, from the collection of microscopic fossil pollen, starches, and phytoliths (the silicate skeletons of plant cell structures), to the recovery of macroscopic charred seeds and wood charcoal. I conduct the latter, and study carbonized seed remains under a microscope to identify plant species. It turns out that if seeds are fired just right (crispy, but not ashy) they can preserve in the archaeological record for thousands, even tens of thousands, of years. Once I identify these seeds I’m able to assemble information on changes in agricultural production and plant consumption over time (e.g. Did the residents of Tel Akko cultivate different crops at different times?) and over space (e.g. Did the people of Tel Akko use different kinds of plants in different contexts on the site?). Plant remains can also help us reconstruct ancient landscapes; track the use of forage, graze and fodder for livestock; and ask questions about the kinds of social interactions that plants facilitate: e.g. Did food choices distinguish different ethnic or status groups? Did men and women conduct different kinds of agricultural labor? Did people in the past promote sustainable environmental practices, or engage in lifestyles that led to erosion, deforestation or pollution?

When you think about it, most of the artifacts that archaeologists recover reflect only a very small proportion of the material culture that people utilized in the past. We find what endures: stone and mudbrick architecture, pottery, lithics (stone tools), bones, and metal items. But people in the past relied on and made so many other kinds of objects, a great deal of them from plant materials: e.g. timber architecture, wooden furniture and utensils, woven textiles, reed baskets, written documents, and, of course, plant foods. This continues to be the case today, even in the age of plastics. Look around you (and on you), and you will find materials made from plants that make your daily life possible. Archaeobotany is an attempt to recuperate these hard-to-find but oh-so-important physical elements of human life.

Still want to hear more about archaeobotany? Allow me to explain in person…

Carbonized remains of a variety of fruit stones from an archaeological site in Scotland. Image from scottishheritagehub.com. 1

Jul, 2017

By Emily Holt

Cows’ Ankles and Urchin Spines: A Day of Zooarchaeology at Tel Akko

My alarm went off at 4:15 am today. Work starts early at Tel Akko, and I like to run in the morning to wake myself up and collect my thoughts. When I open the lab at 5:30 am, I’m feeling alert and ready to meet the past. And it’s a good thing, too, because my tables are covered with piles of fragmented animal bones. It looks more like a mess than information.

I’m the zooarchaeologist at Tel Akko this year, and it’s my job to identify, record, and interpret the animal remains recovered by the excavations. Animal remains are an extremely common find on archaeological projects, and they provide a wealth of information about diet, economy, environment, social status, mobility, and other aspects of ancient cultures that archaeologists work to understand. But getting from broken bits of bone to a reconstruction of something like ethnic differences in food choice is a complex and painstaking process.

How does zooarchaeological analysis begin? One bone at a time. I examine each bone or bone fragment for

the shapes and features that would allow me to identify it to species – if I’m lucky – or as close to species as possible. All kinds of factors come into play when I make these identifications. For example, an astragalus (ankle bone) of a cow has basically the same shape as the astragalus of a sheep or goat, but of course it’s much bigger. Telling the difference between the astragali of sheep and goats is much more difficult – only a few parts of the bone are different, and it’s best if all of them are preserved for me to make a really secure identification. Often this can’t be done, and I’ll record a bone as “sheep or goat.” That particular bone won’t help me tell if Akko ever developed an intensive wool-producing industry, but it will contribute to answering other questions, such as how food preferences at the site changed over time with the influence of new ethnic groups. Zooarchaeological analysis is many-layered, and the only way to get at all the questions we’d like to answer is by collecting a lot of data.

Every bone fragment provides some kind of data – even those that are unidentifiable. Unidentifiable bones can still show evidence of being chewed by carnivores, often an indication of the presence of dogs on the site. Similarly, many bone fragments preserve evidence of rodent gnawing. Some bones may preserve cut marks and help us understand ancient butchery practices (one of my favorite studies in zooarchaeology uses differences in butchering practices to look at inter-ethnic marriage in the ancient world*). Burned bone fragments can tell us about both cooking and trash disposal.

Even tiny bones are important sources of information, and some of the bones I study at Tel Akko are very tiny indeed. These are the bones recovered through the process of flotation – taking samples of excavated sediment and processing them with water to extract carbonized plant remains and other tiny finds. The resulting animal remains are often only a few millimeters in size, but they can be one of our most important sources of information for the use of marine resources and the presence of reptiles, amphibians, and small mammals like mice on the site. If you’re not sure what mice have to do with understanding the past, check out this excellent study.

Zooarchaeology takes a long time, and today I worked seven hours before lunch and still feel like I’ve barely made a dent. After lunch, I’ll attend a lecture by another of the specialists at the site and then spend two hours washing the new bones that have come in from the last few days of excavation. At this point in the season, it feels impossible. I have to take a deep breath and remind myself that no matter how daunting it looks, it will all get done in the end. And when it does, we’ll be thousands of fragments closer to understanding the past at Tel Akko.

* Gil J. Stein. 2012. Food Preparation, Social Context, and Ethnicity in a Prehistoric Mesopotamian Colony. In S. R. Graff and E. Rodríguez-Alegría (eds.), The Menial Art of Cooking: Archaeological Studies of Cooking and Food Preparation, pp. 47-63. University Press of Colorado, Boulder.

Jul, 2017

By Jennifer Munro

Cats are always cats

The domestic cat has stamped its claws on ancient history. A long time ago someone left some amphora to dry in a place clearly owned by a cat. The mark of its claws is visible in the clay where the cat may have scratched or stretched. Centuries later this piece was found on Tel Akko.

Jul, 2017

By Martha Risser

μεζέδες

A lovely rolled-rim plate was found yesterday in the Garea (i.e., eastern part of our excavations, where Professor Gary Gilbert works). Made in Athens, Greece, in the early Hellenistic period and exported to Akko, this plate is covered with a shiny black glaze. The glaze is partly mottled to red on the underside, an effect that would be seen if the plate was leaned against a wall when not in use. At the center of the floor is a stamped “palmette cross” within a circle of chattering or rouletting. Except for a few chips that are missing from the rim, the plate is in excellent condition.

With a diameter of only 12.5 cm – about 7 inches – this plate was probably best suited for μεζέδες (snacks). We might imagine cosmopolitan Phoenicians reclining on cushioned couches, enjoying the soft sea breezes as they nibbled on olives, pickled radishes, or little honey-drenched cakes.

Jul, 2017

By Sarah Kammer

The Magic of Archaeology

For almost a year, I have been struggling. Whenever I was asked the dreaded “What do you want to do with your degree?” question, I always hesitated to respond, as frankly I am not sure what I want to do.

Akko, archaeology, field school, Total Archaeology 1

Jul, 2017

By Caroline Sausser

From the Farm to the Tel

Digging in the dirt is not an unfamiliar task for me. Having visited my grandparents’ farm throughout my life, I have often plowed gardens, put up fences, and weeded flower beds. And every now and then while digging, I’d find a broken piece of pottery in the fields.

Caroline Sausser, Miami University, Pot Sherds, SS 19, tel akko 1

Jul, 2017

By Jennifer Munro

FINDS FINDS FINDS

Over the past few days, the tel has been giving up many of its long-hidden secrets. Some of the pictures are here for you to share with your friends and family. Just hit the share button at the bottom of this post.

amulet, archaeology, astragalus, goddess, hellenic pottery, israel, rhodean amphora 0

Jul, 2017

By Rachel Strohl

Bridging the Gap

Walking through a historical site, it is easy to romanticize the past. You see a temple where Jesus worshipped, or a site that was the birthplace of a key character in the past, and you want to imagine a time that is nothing like where we live now.

Jul, 2017

By Megan Ashbrook

Living My Dream

Before I came to the Tel Akko Total Archaeology Project I thought I knew what archaeology was. Since the 6^th grade, my dream has been to be an archaeologist. As a little kid, I would travel with my family to many museums and archaeological sites, and I would read or watch anything about history for fun. But since coming to Akko there are many things that I have experienced and so much more I have to learn.

Though I have to get up at 4:45am, 5 days a week, I don’t mind because I’m going to do something I love. The first few days this week went by slowly, but it was fun getting to know everyone as we were working to prepare the site for excavation.

I thought the first half of the week was fun, but I didn’t know what I had coming for me on Friday, our first day excavating. Before tel breakfast, I was cleaning a section, but then after breakfast I started excavating in my square. Some may not find digging out dirt just to sweep it up again interesting, but for some reason I do. When the end of the excavation day came I didn’t want to leave the tel. I could have kept working there for much longer.

The artifacts that come out of the dirt make the labor worth it because they can tell us about people in the past that lived on the tel. Since taking ceramic art classes and learning about pottery in archaeology classes, ceramics have fascinated me. From pottery you can learn about trade, diet, government administration, and cultural contact among other things.

While digging and pottery washing, I get really excited about interesting pottery finds. I know others probably think I’m weird and hate pottery washing, but I am living my dream.

I may be living my dream at Tel Akko, but still it is a bit unnerving to make large life decisions not knowing if they are the right ones. Some encouragement has come in the past few days both on the tel and in the labs. On the tel I was trained on two measuring instruments, and now I have been using one completely by myself to take elevation measurements for the square I’m working in. Both on the tel and in the labs, I have been asking a bunch of questions. For example, in one of the labs with Dr. Rosenzweig I asked if a few tiny pieces were bone and it turned out they were! It feels really good to know that my instincts from all those museums and readings are correct.

While I’m at Tel Akko, I hope to be a bit closer to figuring out what I want to do post-college. Right now my love for archaeology is only growing. I hope to make 6^th grade me proud of how I am living the dream I have had for most of my life.

Jul, 2017

By Amanda Pumphrey

#sandbagswag

The hardest days in terms of physical work on Tel Akko are typically the first day and the last day of the excavation. Perhaps the first day is the worst for many reasons but both days have one thing in common: the notorious sandbags. Seriously, anyone who works on excavations in Israel already knows or will come to learn about the (in)famous sandbags because the Israeli Antiquities Authority adopted Tel Akko’s methodology for closing an excavation which means the entire site is filled with sandbags until the next season. At least on the final day of the excavation we are more prepared to sandbag. We are already acclimated to the heat and humidity, the time changes, and the hard work each day. However, the very first day of the excavation may come with a bit of a surprise to those who are experiencing a dig for the first time.

After arriving only a day or two before Day One, jet legged and exhausted, we climb the steep steps of Tel Akko which seem to go one forever when it is 5:30am. We see the site covered in weeds and peeking through the overgrown brush and covered in dirt there they are; the sandbags. So. Many. Sandbags. And each one weighs about as much as a small child and all of these dirty “toddlers” have to be removed promptly from the site before any sort of excavation can take place. During past seasons, completely removing the sandbags from the site usually took about two days. The process is as follows: the team forms a line stretching from inside the site from the furthest most square to the pedestrian path outside of the security fences. Someone – a strong and brave someone – has the tough job at the head of the line that involves using the terea (hoe) to flip over the sandbags that have been lodged into the ground and on top of one another and exposed in various weather conditions for an entire year. This also requires making sure there are no current residents living on or around the sandbags such as scorpions, spiders, snakes, or anything else potentially dangerous before quickly passing the sandbag along to the next person. Keep in mind that Tel Akko was not only previously occupied by ancient communities but the site is home to a contemporary ecosystem that is very much alive.

After the sandbags have been sent on their way, passed down the line, person to person, they reach their final destination which is the pedestrian walkway where someone organizes them in rows, stacked along the fence line that is directly outside of the site. While teams are working to remove the sandbags moving from square to square until they are finished, simultaneously other teams are cutting open the sandbags and putting their soil contents into the wheel barrows and pushing the soil to the designated dumping area. Have you ever tried to push a wheel barrow filled with several sandbags worth of soil for several meters? It is hard!

Typically, the sandbag removal takes at least an entire day. Then on the second day there are usually several stacks of sandbags left outside the fence waiting to be cut open, the dirt emptied, and taken to the dump. However, the start of Season 8 at Tel Akko was different. On the first day of excavation on Tuesday, July 18^th – we did it all in one day! That means we not only removed all of the sandbags from the entire site but we also fully disposed of them as well. At the end of the first day, not one sandbag was left on the walk path. We had not only finished sandbagging but started to clean the site after breakfast. Because the sandbags were removed at such an unprecedented rapid pace, the disposal team had to catch up and continue to use the wheel barrows for the sandbag soil removal. So that meant that the team cleaning the site could not use the wheel barrows to remove the excess soil that had fallen from the sandbags or washed into the squares.

What do you do when you have already broken a Tel Akko record? Become even more hardcore by forming bucket lines. Passing buckets filled to the brim with dirt may be harder than tossing sandbags. At the end of the work day which is usually from 5:30am – 12:30pm the site looked amazing, but we did not. We were extremely hot and sweaty, exhausted and dirty. Some of us were dirtier than others. (Shout out to Justin and JT!) Did I mention that the majority of the group first did a tour of Tel Akko that morning which lasted about one hour and we also had a break for breakfast which lasts approximately thirty minutes.

That means that in less than six hours the entire site which consists of 25 squares, most of which are 5×5 meters, was cleared of sandbags. Oh, and by the way it takes at least 2,000 sandbags to secure the site for the off season. If our team was this productive on Day One, I cannot wait to see what we will accomplish by the end of Season 8! Now that is what I call #sandbagswag.

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#sandbagswag