Could someone jog my
memory concerning the debunking of the dichotomy between carbonised (turned to
carbon but not burnt) and charred plant remains? Jessen and Helbaek in their
monograph on British/Irish cereals from 1944 allude to the carbonisation
explanation by early archaeologists who found blackened cereals in Egyptian
tombs and thought they must have been turned to carbon simply by being 'buried'
for a long time, and they refer to workers such as Percival who "even
maintains that the carbonisation has generally taken place in the
last-named
way,
rejecting the idea that the carbonisation of cereals occurred through the action
of
fire".
But I am sure there
is some literature challenging what is surely an 'urban myth' in
archaeology. Can anyone shed any light? I ask, because a senior
colleague (not in this Department, I hasten to say) clearly still thinks that
carbonisation without charring is a real phenomenon - citing the example of
black, apparently charred, textile remains from Saxon graves in contexts
where exposure to fire is not considered likely. If not charred, how are these
remains preserved?
Allan
--
Dr Allan
Hall, English Heritage Senior Research Fellow, Department of Archaeology,
University of York, The King's Manor, York YO1 7EP, UK
+44 1904
434950 (fax 433902)
http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/arch/staff/Hall.htm
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