Comparing Technological Choices for Grain Processing at Aşıklı Höyük, an Early Neolithic Village in Turkey: Experimental Removal of Chaff from Barley (*Hordeum vulgare)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Formal Models and Experimental Archaeology of Ground Stone Milling Technology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Experimental studies can make significant contributions to understanding the function of grinding stones found in archaeological contexts. Milling technology at the early Neolithic site of Aşıklı Höyük in Turkey is dominated by querns or grinding slabs, but mortars and pestles are not uncommon. Most of the mortars at Aşıklı Höyük are conical block mortars found in proximity to grinding slabs. Unlike the grinding slabs, which are strongly associated with flour production, principal functions of the conical mortars are less certain. The mortars may have expanded processing capabilities to resources like wild nuts, fruits, and herbaceous plants, or they could have been important for dehusking grains prior to flour production. Our experiments compare the effectiveness of two types of pestles (basalt and wood) for dehusking hulled barley (*Hordeum vulgare) in a conic basalt mortar, under two conditions (with and without water). We note that the process of dehusking is more effective when water is added, and that productivity is less affected by the choice of the pestle. Importantly, the experiments also allowed botanical remains from the different processing methods to be analyzed, which provides important insights to assess past crop processing and dehusking practices. We report on these results as well.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Formal Models and Experimental Archaeology of Ground Stone Milling Technology

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32466