Dear Dragana and all,
As an illustration of some well preserved megaspores, I've just uploaded a
couple of photos onto my University web-space... They're not the best
images in the world - apologies - but do show surface texture and the
distinctive three-pointed fissuring on some of them (the background grid is
1mm squared graph paper). Just last week I contacted Allan Hall about
these, as they had been baffling me! So it is courtesy of him that I now
know they are megaspores.
http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/rmb51/
Although quite brown, these are charred remains from a late Roman oven up
on the chalk hills (Wolds) in Yorkshire. There are other macrofossils in
the same feature that suggest burning of peat or turf - mollusc shells of
several Vertigo spp., and tiny woody stem fragments that may be ericaceous
(but this is not yet established). The oven also has plenty of charred
spelt wheat grains and iron slag, so it would appear to have been
multi-purpose.
If any of you have encountered similar remains, particularly of this era, I
would be interested to hear about them.
Yours,
Rachel Ballantyne.
Dept. of Archaeology
University of Cambridge
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