To Be or Not to Be Attributed to Specific Plants? The Integration of Phytolith Analysis and Soil and Sediment Micromorphology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Macrobotanical and Microbotanical Archaeobotany, Part II" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Despite extensive research during the last decades, phytolith botanical attribution remains a critical issue. Nevertheless, the development and expansion of reference collections confirm that some taxa produce very distinctive phytoliths at different taxonomic levels. Things become more complex when considering closely related taxa. Phytoliths found in domesticated taxa deriving from wild relatives provide one of the best illustrations of this phenomena. Indeed, such taxa, especially at the species level, typically produce phytoliths of similar shapes and types difficult to distinguish from each other. In such cases, morphometric analyses (measurements of size and shape) may allow us to discriminate taxonomically closely related species. However, the application of morphometric criteria is not straightforward, especially for archaeological contexts. Not only large samples of similar phytolith types are needed, but the phytoliths from an archaeological context should all originate from a single taxon and plant part. So far, only some primary archaeological contexts, such as ceramic jar contents, provide such conditions. By focusing on one cereal phytolith known as ELONGATE DENTATE/DENDRITIC, we are highlighting in this presentation how some of these issues can be overcome by the development of reference collections and the integration of phytolith analysis with soil and sediment micromorphology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Advances in Macrobotanical and Microbotanical Archaeobotany, Part II   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40014.0