Hi Liz,
Kate Griffiths looked at oat chaff in a roof space in Wales and I have seen indet straw used as insulation in a Victorian house.
Kath
----- Original Message -----
From: "Naomi Miller" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, 12 September, 2014 4:37:43 PM
Subject: Re: Oats underneath the floorboards
Hello,
Yesterday I was asked to look at some "grain" from an ancient Egyptian corn mummy (statuette stuffed with grain). I was not surprised that it was just the empty barley husks...I just assumed that the starchy kernels had been eaten by insects.
Naomi
On Sep 12, 2014, at 10:42 AM, Don O'Meara wrote:
> Liz,
> It's a slightly scenario but I have seen both hemp and oats (it seemed to be mainly the straw though) from under floorboards in a 17/18th century house in Cockermouth in Cumbria. I had wondered if it was in my case used as an insulating material as it was a fairly large town house within the town, though there was a rope industry in the town which might account for the hemp.
> Regards,
> Don.
>
> On 12 Sep 2014 13:53, "Liz Pearson" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I've recently been sent some dried out plant material from underneath the floorboards on the first floor of a 16th century house (see attached photo). The sample was mostly cultivated oat, with a little wild oat, tetraploid wheat (probably rivet wheat), bread wheat, apple pips, pea fragments etc and some weeds seeds.
>
> The oat that made up most of the sample was odd in that the grain was entirely absent from tightly closed florets. It looks like the grain has perished. I had wondered if it could have been attacked by a granary weevil or fungal infestation? The only insect remains I could find were spider beetle (kindly Id'd by David Smith), which does apparently live on dry materials, old food in mature housing, thatch etc. Does anyone have any suggestions?
>
> I'm assuming the material resulted from crops being stored in a first floor room, falling through the floorboards, or it is the remains of animal nesting (there were animal droppings), and some might have been extracted from thatch by animals. If anyone has seen anything similar I'd be interested to know.
>
> Regards,
>
> Liz Pearson
> Worcestershire Archaeology
> The Hive
> The Butts
> Worcester WR1 3PB
>
-------------------------------------------------
Naomi F. Miller, Consulting Scholar
University of Pennsylvania Museum
Near East Section
3260 South Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA
tel.: 215.898.4075
fax: 215.898.0657
WWW: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~nmiller0 & http://upenn.academia.edu/NaomiMiller
email: [log in to unmask]
Files attached to this email may be in ISO 26300 format (OASIS Open Document Format). If you have difficulty opening them, please visit http://iso26300.info for more information.
This email has been processed by SmoothZap - www.smoothwall.net
|