Plant archiology

[slowworm]

Does such a thing exist? When all visible physical remains from human habitation disappear is it possible to trace usage from what plants are left growing? I ask because I've found a hop plants growing down here in Devon where I've not seen any wild hops growing, and it turns out it may be an old mill site so I have been wondering if 100+ years ago if he locals cultivated their own hops?

(I mean archaeology, sorry can't edit the thread title).

 

[Dave Budd]

Depending on how old you are thinking, the field of study is archaeobotony and is very very useful for establishing the ancient environment and sociaeconomic implications for a given area and time

Or if you are thinking really old plant remains, then paleobotany covers fossilised plants :-D

N.b. chances are if it was that recent, then somebody in the local pub might recall their grandparents mentioning homebrew or the like

 

[Robson Valley]

Palynology = the study of pollen. The surfaces of pollen grains are sculptured species-specific like fingerprints.
Drill a plug in a swamp bottom = layers of pollen going back many thousands of years, like growth rings.

Phytoliths = these are microscopic bits of plant commonly (!) found embedded in stones suspected of being used in paleo food preparation.
There's a cell pattern in the surface of a plant leaf that's quite close to fingerprint species value.

Fire pits and hearths may show a perimeter of debris from heated foods. Even the charcoal can reveal what woods were used for the fires.

 

[Toddy]

It's funny the remnants that you come across.

Looking for clearance townships, and everything's more or less crumbled and rotted away and is now covered in heather and peat...and then you find a big patch of nettles.... thing is that nettles thrive in high nitrogen .....like the end of the byre where the drainage ran.

Or trees that have grown up with funny boles to them. They can be old abandoned copices of willow, hazel, and the like.

Fruit trees too, apples, more commonly plums of some kind, that have outgrown their original prunings and become full sized trees.

Older data comes up in things like varves; the sedimentation layers in the bottom of lochs, ponds, lakes and the like. They can show the pollen record of the area in the past, and it can be tied into a record of climatic variations that give a tree ring like dating sequence.
For instance, a presently wooded environment that shows repeated layers of the pollen of cereal crops. Indicates what folks were growing there in the past. The pollen of trees themselves can be indicative of the changing progression of the forests too.

There's a real skill in reading a landscape, in working out the past from the present. It makes for some really interesting rambles

M

 

[Janne]

The delicious Parasol Mushroom grows in areas of old human habitation.

Same with the herb Chamanerion ( Rallarros in swedish) it grows alongside roads and railways ( heavily disturbed soil)

It is fun to try to find plsces of old habitation.

 

[Robson Valley]

From time to time, I got to be the lab guy, analyzing the wood samples to species.
My professor's wife was a palynologist.
If only she and her skills had appeared a decade later with scanning electron microscopes.

Wanuskewin was a paleo village, occupied for 6,000+ years. Even the wild onions are still in rows.

 

[Janne]

Pollen in sediments are also used to drtermine the climate, what grows or is cultivated

 

[nicksteele1990]

Dendrochronology is the study of tree rings. A more productive year means a wider ring, and you end up with a record of past conditions that you can understand climactic conditions from. The dendrochronological record goes back thousands of years more or less unbroken, and can be used to date events to within a single year.