bronze age environment and economy in the troad - Universität ...

chapter 3: analysis
3 Analytical results – Sample description
and statistical analysis
This chapter provides information on the origin and
composition of the samples. Correspondence analysis was
applied to look for explanatory patterns reflecting the Bronze
Age Troians’ economic behaviour (e.g. the range crops and
their relative importance in people’s diet, technical aspects of
agriculture such as intensification, etc.) and the ecology behind
it. Further interpretation and discussion of the analytical results
is presented in chapters 4 and 5.
3.1 Description and interpretation of the
samples
The samples were taken from different archaeological contexts
identified by the excavators. The contexts may be of
‛morphological type’ (e.g. burnt layers) and functional type
(e.g. ovens). This means that in the first case the context
description does not refer to a specific activity, while in the
second case the description implies more or less clearly what
kind of activity was carried out at that location (e.g. cerealprocessing,
storage, cooking, waste disposal, etc.). The
‛functional units’ used here are often related to architectural
objects.
The inclusion of the ‛functional units’ in the description of the
samples, provides additional information about the conditions
under which the material was deposited.
Six different ‛function types’ or contexts were distinguished.
1 Floors inside the buildings, which sometimes contain storage
finds, represent architectural units of the surface that the
people were living on. They were well represented in all the
periods from Kumtepe B onwards, but especially in Late
Bronze Age contexts. These samples were combined with
samples from walls (which were frequently sampled in
Kumtepe A and Early Bronze Age only) and other architectural
objects (e.g. postholes) that were parts of houses and related to
floors.
2 ‛Fills’, i.e. sediment layers which are not defined as floors
but were related to architecture. Many of the Early Bronze Age
samples came from fills. ‛Fills’ were layers close to any kind
of wall and cannot easily be assigned to a specific activity.
Similarly difficult to interpret in terms of their origin are
remains from pits, ditches, channels and wells as places of
accumulating waste material. They were often sampled at
Kumtepe and the samples are usually rich in material.
3 Ovens, hearths and working places near ovens are relatively
small, concentrated deposits mainly within houses, in which
the remains of crop and food processing had a good chance of
survival. (The few remains found within fireplaces, however,
were heavily corroded.) Such contexts were well represented in
Middle Bronze Age and Kumtepe B layers.
4 Contents of pottery and pithoi were frequent in almost all the
periods except from Kumtepe B and Late Bronze Age Troy.
5 Burial contexts were sampled rarely (only in the Late Bronze
Age) and were, as expected, mainly without botanical remains.
6 rubble, unknown or not interpretable contexts. The samples
were related to structures, but these deposits were not clearly
definable, in terms of function. Most apparently related to the
construction of foundations or demolition and collapse of
buildings. There were many samples from Kumtepe, Late
Bronze Age and Post-Bronze Age levels from such contexts.
The proportion of the different ‛functional units’ over the
sequence of periods varies considerably. Floors are mainly
represented amongst Late Bronze Age samples, fills amongst
Early Bronze Age samples, ovens are very common amongst
the samples from Kumtepe B and from Middle Bronze Age
Troy, pottery contents appear mainly in samples from Post-
Bronze Age and Middle Bronze Age contexts, and burials had
significant seed content exclusively in Late Bronze Age Troy.
Broadly speaking, the Late Bronze Age samples come mainly
from architectural contexts like floors and walls, while the
Middle Bronze Age samples are mainly related to food
preparation (ovens, vessel contents). The samples from the
earlier periods (Early Bronze Age and Kumtepe layers) derive
mainly from waste and storage facilities.
For the benefit of readers who are not statistically minded, a
more qualitative description of the samples is presented here.
The samples were mainly selected for contextual reasons, e.g.
when secure archaeological infomation about the context was
available. Multiple sampling of the same context was also
noted (for the location of the Troy samples from the Upper
City see Map 2).
3.1.1 The Kumtepe samples
3.1.1.1 Neolithic/Chalcolithic Kumtepe A
In contrast to Kumtepe B samples, which yielded the majority
of data from this site, Kumtepe A is restricted to the
‛bioprofile’ and trench F28 with only 7 samples. Two samples
from Kumtepe A came from inside a building. One of those
(BP21) represents the possibly disturbed contents of a vessel,
with a species spectrum dominated by Eragrostis sp. (open
vegetation) and with a few cereal remains. The other sample
(BP20) seems to be an already cleaned deposit of a crop
legume mixture of lentil and bitter vetch in a ratio of almost
1:1, close to a wall. The only accompanying weed is Lathyrus
sativus/cicera.
Because only seven samples were obtained from Kumtepe A
horizons, the observable differences between Kumtepe A and
B samples could be either functional or economic in nature.
The archaeological and archaeozoological results strongly
suggest economic differences (pers. com. M. Uerpmann).
The main differences in archaeobotanical sample composition
between Kumtepe A and B are in the food plants. In the
Kumtepe A levels, beside fruit trees (fig) the grain legumes
(lentil and bitter vetch) are most abundant, while cereal crops
are only sparsely recorded. With oysters as another main
component of diet, the everyday food of the Kumtepe A people
can be described as very rich in proteins and in ‛low quality’
carbohydrates. Such a diet may be reflected in the dental health
of the Kumtepe A population.
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