Dear Otto,
I did some experimental charring and weighing to try to work this out
when I worked on a large deposit of hazelnut shell fragments from a
Mesolithic feature in the Southern Hebrides.
Carruthers, Wendy J. (2000) The charred hazelnut shell and other plant
remains. In (ed) Steven Mithen, Hunter-gatherer landscape archaeology.
The Southern Hebrides Mesolithic Project 1988-98. Volume 2. McDonald
Institute Monographs, p.407-415.
It's not possible to be very accurate as there is a large variation
between large nuts and small nuts (50g per 100 charred nutshells
compared with 29g), so the size of nuts in the period & geographic area
you are studying will have a big effect. Let me know if you would like a
photocopy.
Best Wishes,
Wendy
-----Original Message-----
From: The archaeobotany mailing list
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Otto Brinkkemper
Sent: 11 November 2005 15:49
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Quantifying Corylus nutshell fragments
Dear all,
I hope you can help me with the following:
I have remains of a neolithic site with large numbers of fragments of
Corylus avellana nut shells. Since the number of fragments is not very
informative, I seek to quantify the remains in terms of minimum number
of whole nuts. I vaguely remember having read somewhere about the weight
of an average complete stone age hazelnut shell, which would help me to
calculate my MNI... But I can't find it in my bibliographic file. I hope
our collective memory is better than my individual one....
Many thanks in advance,
oTTo
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