Dear Meriel McClatchie (and members),

Thank you for your reply. It is good news that you have funding to do some fundamental research on archaeological starch. Could I suggest three relatively simple experimental procedures which might be of some help to your research program?  

First try to extract starch from your samples. If you succeed in extracting “archaeological starch” first do a chemical analysis, probably the best method would be to use a probe microanalyzer  in an SEM which is capable of quantitatively measuring the abundance of elements on a very small object. This is to test that “archaeological starch” is chemically starch and is not a transformation of plant calcium oxalate crystals, a phytolith or a spherolith, as suggested by some researchers. All are common on archaeological sites and have similar optical properties. If the sample corresponds chemically to starch then AMS date it, you should have enough carbon for an approximate date. If it is ancient then construct an experiment using blind testing of starch grains from a variety of species and plant parts within those species, leaf, root, seeds ect.  to test the reliability of identification procedures. If these tests are positive then you can proceed in using starch grains as an archaeobotanical tool, even if you cannot explain why they are preserved.