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Plants and Archaeology ARCL0019: 0.5 Unit Term II University College London Institute of Archaeology BA/ BSc option 2019-20 Plants and Archaeology ARCL0019: 0.5 unit Term II Coordinators: Professor Dorian Q Fuller Prof. Fuller Office: 311, Phone 7679 [2] 4771 Email: [email protected] Office hours: Wednesday 2pm-4pm Lab practical surgery day: Fridays. Otherwise operating an open door, “fair game” if seen policy Class Meetings Mondays 2pm-4pm Class Room B13 Main Laboratory: 313 Select laboratory sessions in basement microscopy, B Hulled barley Emmer wheat This handbook contains the basic information about the content and administration of the course. Additional subject-specific reading lists and individual session hand-outs will be given out at appropriate points in the course. If students have queries about the objectives, structure, content, assessment or organisation of the course, they should consult the Course Co-ordinators. 1 OVERVIEW Short description. This course will introduce students to the study of archaeobotanical remains, in terms of both thematic issues and interpretation and practical work in the laboratory, including experience with setting samples for seeds. The course will covers themes relating to agricultural systems, plant domestication, hunter-gatherer plant use, food and cooking, and long-term patterns in landuse and human impact on the environment. Students will also be introduced to a range of archaeobotanical datasets and their potential, including wood charcoal, tuber parenchyma and phytoliths. Teaching Schedule: Week-by-week summary 13 January 1 Introduction What is archaeobotany? How are plants preserved? How does crop-processing structure typical 20 January 2 Crop-processing and social organization. An introductory over view of cereals and their identification. Part 2 [Room 313] lab introduction, example of cereals. Lab procedure for working on your own samples [for assessment 2] 27 January 3 Reconstructing Agricultural Systems. Part 1. Arable Ecology, Weed Seeds, Intensification vs extensification; Part 2. Annual vs perennial systems, the domestication of tree fruits. Part 3. Short practical introduction to tree fruits. 3 February 4 Hunter-gatherer archaeobotany. Part 2. Quantification and interpretation in archaeobotany, with special reference to the Lab Project. Guest lecture: Dr. Michele Wollstonecroft 10 February 5 Documenting crop domestication- with a focus on seed crops/cereals. Part 2, Lab session looking at wild and domesticated cereals 17 February - READING WEEK. No Class Meeting/ LAB UNAVAILABLE 24 February 6 Cooking and eating—food remains, palaeofaeces, and dietary isotopes 26 Feb. - Essay Due 2 March 7 Wood Charcoal in archaeobotany – Guest lecture and practical: Ayelen Delgado Orellana 9 March 8 Tubers and Parenchyma in archaeobotany – Guest lecture and practical: –Jose Julian Garay-Vasquez 16 March 9 Phytoliths in archaeobotany –lecture and practical 23 March 10 Macroscale archaeobotany – rates of change, patterns of agriculture and social cultural complexity, long-term landuse and the anthropocene 26 March ** Lab Project Report Due Basic texts Wilkinson, Keith & Chris Stevens (2008). Environmental archaeology : approaches, techniques & applications Stroud : Tempus: Rev. ed.: 2008 INST ARCH BB 6 WIL Marston, John M., Jade D'Alpoim Guedes, and Christina Warinner (eds.) (2014). Method and theory in paleoethnobotany . Boulder : University Press of Colorado. INST ARCH BB 5 MAR Pearsall, Deborah (2000) Paleoethnobotany : a handbook of procedures, 2nd edition. London: Academic Press Classmark:ISSUE DESK IOA PEA 6 :Archaeology Classmark:INST ARCH BB 5 PEA Or Pearsall, Deborah (2015) Paleoethnobotany : a handbook of procedures, 3rd edition. Left Coast Press. Classmark:INST ARCH BB 5 PEA :SLC Archaeology Classmark:ISSUE DESK IOA PEA 9 Methods of Assessment This module is assess by two pieces of work. a) One assessed essay (70%) due 26 February. b) A laboratory assessed report based on basic sorting and quantification (30%). due 26 March. Teaching Methods & Laboratory Work Course meetings will consist of 2-hour sessions, including a mixture of lecture, discussion and practical sessions. Students will be expected to carry out a lab project, involving microscopy. Microscopes and reference collections in Room 313 will be available for student use during normal weekdays 9-5, except when other classes are in session there (normally, 4-6pm Thursdays). The course instructor will be available outside of scheduled class periods, by arrangement, to provide additional practical supervision to students on an individual or small group basis, either in the lab (313) or the course instructor’s office (311). As indicated on the front page of this handbook, Friday or Tuesday afternoon are preferred time for lab work. At these times Dorian may be in the Lab and not his office. WORKLOAD There will be 20 hours of class time, including practical and discussion sessions, for this course. Students will be expected to undertake around 60 hours of reading for the course, plus 60 hours preparing for and producing the assessed work (including 20-30 hours of microscopy for the practical project). This adds up to a total workload of some 140 hours for the course. PREREQUISITES: none 2 AIMS, OBJECTIVES AND ASSESSMENT Aim: This course aims to introduce students to the range of issues addressed through archaeobotanical data and the basic methods used in archaeobotany Objectives On successful completion of this course students should: Be able to recognise the different archaeobotanical datasets and explain how they are preserved. Have an overview of the questions addressed through archaeobotany. Be familiar with examples of studies of hunter-gatherer archaeobotany. Be able to describe the basic differences between a wild and domesticated cereal. Be able to discuss lines of evidence for the construction of past diet and food processing. Be able to discuss the reconstruction of past environments from archaeobotanical evidence. Learning Outcomes On successful completion of the module students should be able to demonstrate/have developed use microscope to make detailedeobservations of plant macro-remains and micro-scopic features. They will have acquired some knowledge of approaches to quantification and making arguments from statistical patterns to data. Both of the above will be reflected especially in Assessment 2. In addition, the will develop critical reflection on how arguments are developed and presented based on quantitie datasets and assumptions of underlying processes for characterization social, economic or evolutionary processes. The latter will be especially developed in their essays (assessment 2). Coursework (if applicable) Assessment tasks (1) Essay. Please select one of the following essay topics. This essay should be about 3500 words, i.e. 3,325-3,675 words. If it falls outside this length range it will be penalized in line with UCL policy. DUE 26 February 2020 1) How can archaeobotanical investigation of hunter-gatherer sites contribute to our understanding of ancient hunter-gatherer subsistence and scheduling? 2) What archaeobotanical criteria can be used to detect the beginnings of agriculture and how is this different from domestication? Discuss these and how they have been applied or ought to be applied in a region of the world of your choice (e.g. Southwest Asia, China, Mesoamerica, North America). 3) How can archaeobotanical evidence be used to reconstruct aspects of agricultural practice (tillage, manuring, irrigation, storage), and what contribution does this make to our understanding of prehistoric societies? 4) How do archaeobotanical approaches based on preserved plant remains compare to the use of stable isotopes to reconstruct past diet? (2) Practical Project. DUE 26 March 2020 The second assignment, a laboratory report of ca. 1500 words (1,425-1,575 words) based on a practical project. This word count does not include data tables or figures. Students will be given each 6 sub-samples of archaeobotanical flotation samples. With guidance provided in class, and supervision outside of class, students will be expected to sort their samples, separating seed/grain/chaff fragments from the background of wood charcoal fragments, and with assistance of Dr. Fuller identify plant remains recovered. Students will be expected to describe and quantify their results and suggest how these might be interpreted in terms of agriculture, wild plant use and/or crop-processing. The lab report should include the following general headings: introduction (introducing the site, and potential research questions to which the archaeobotanical evidence contributes), materials and methods (briefing describing the labwork and describing methods of counting & quantifying, with a few relevant references), results (presenting results and patterns in results, graphs and tables are useful here), discussion (a brief assessment of any potential conclusions). If students are unclear about the nature of an assignment, they should discuss this with the Module Co-ordinator. Students are not permitted to re-write and re-submit essays in order to try to improve their marks. However, students may be permitted, in advance of the deadline for a given assignment, to submit for comment a brief outline of the assignment. Alternatively, teachers may arrange to discuss with the whole class how each assignment might be approached. Co-ordinators must make it clear in the module handbook what procedure they follow with regard to advice on assignments. The Module Co-ordinator is willing
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