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

chapter 3: analysis
exception of the sample from the context older than Troy I
(Graph 17, 19a, 19b).
Correspondingly, the percentage participation of members of
the waterplant group (Graph 18 and 19d) is relatively low,
except for samples containing Chara sp. associated with the
cereal remains. Samples containing ‛horticultural’ remains
(olive, grape and fig) contain very few remains of waterplants,
and the same is true of the sample from the context older than
Troy I.
The percentage of plant remains in each sample belonging to
the weed group (Graph 20 and 19c) is relatively low, with
values between 10% and 20%.
3.2.3.3 Diversity
Looking at the species spectra within the three classes of
species (crops, weeds, waterplants), a relatively high variability
in occurrences (presence) is recognisable (Graph 21). The bulk
of the samples have between four and eight different crop
categories. The waterplants are very variably represented.
What is striking is the large number of weed species in the
sample from the context older than Troy I. This broad
spectrum is dominated in terms of abundance by the few
species that are not included in the weed group, the waterplant
group or the crop group, but which were categorised as
remains deriving from dung.
Although comparisons of diversity between different sites are
complicated by the taphonomic problems mentioned
previously, it has to be noted that there is the same number of
crop categories (8) during Early Bronze Age Troy as during
Kumtepe B, although with some different species.
The range of wild plants is broad, but none of those is
particularly abundant. The above-mentioned sample older than
Troy I has a very low evenness, which is due to the abundance
of some species deriving from open, habitats. In all, the weeds
tend to indicate little specialisation, or alternatively that cropprocessing
could have taken place at some distance from the
settlement.
3.2.4 Middle Bronze Age Troy
3.2.4.1 Associations of species and samples
The data set used for statistical analysis consisted of 27
samples and 71 species. Except for one (K8BP09), the samples
all belong to Troy IV horizons. Some of the samples were
almost pure crop deposits, which resulted on the whole in
totally different patterns compared to those from Early Bronze
Age Troy, where the bulk of samples consisted of cropprocessing
by-products and plant remains associated with
dung.
The scatter plot of the species (Graph 22) shows a clear pattern
created by the crop storage samples. The two species which
dominate variation within this data set are Pisum sativum and
Linum usitatissimum. While pea is restricted to a few samples
of similar composition, flax is frequent in various samples of
different species composition. Beside Camelina sativa, the
species most commonly found with flax is Fumaria officinalis
(Graph 19). In graph 22 the first axis separates the storage
finds of flax and Camelina sativa from all the other remains,
including garden pea, cereals, grape, fig, lentil and bitter vetch.
In some samples flax was accompanied in a ratio of up to 1:1
by gold-of-pleasure. Most of the samples in which these crops
occur represent cleaned stored products. Many of them come
from one Middle Bronze Age building, where the crops are
found in different areas, probably indicating the spatial
patterning of activities (Figures 6 and 7).
The statistical impact of the flax and pea samples resulted in a
dense concentration of all the other samples and species in one
part of the diagram (second quadrant). The upper part of this
concentration () consists of weeds and Quercus sp.. In
square barley grain, fig, grape, bitter vetch and various
weeds such as Chenopodium album, Lathyrus sativus/cicera,
and moisture-indicating plants occur. The species
accumulation contains einkorn grain, barley rachises, lentil
and a relatively large number of moisture-indicating plants:
Aeluropus litoralis, Juncus sp., Spergularia marina, Salsola
kali are more or less salt tolerant and seem to be associated
with the two types of cereal remains mentioned, suggesting
either cultivation under relatively moist and salty conditions or
that ruminants may have been grazed in similar environments,
depending on the context of the samples. Other waterplants,
possibly not related to crops (e.g. Typha latifolia) also occur in
this part of the diagram. Square includes most of the cereal
grain and chaff categories; the only wild plants in this group
are some waterplants such as Cladium mariscus and Chara sp.,
and Cistus sp. (a member of maquis-type vegetation).
In order to get a clearer picture of patterning within the data,
the two crops, which determined the patterns described above,
flax and garden pea, were eliminated (Graph 22, right). Hulled
wheat chaff is now separated from the other remains on the
first axis. The fourth axis separates emmer grain from the other
remains. As in the previous diagram, barley clearly has
different associations to the other cereals. The grain lies within
a group of Lolium spp., which might indicate that the
morphological similarities between these seeds make it
difficult to separate the weedy grass from the crop grain. The
rachises of barley are, as seen earlier, associated with smallseeded
grasses (Aeluropus litoralis, Eragrostis minor), some of
them moisture-indicating, and with Juncus sp.. It is not
possible to decide at this stage whether a crop-processing byproduct
or remains from animal feed are represented. The
hulled wheat chaff remains are only associated with a few wild
plants from a variety of habitats, which indicates an
accumulation of plants from various sources. Hulled wheat
grains are associated with various weeds from drier habitats
than those associated with barley rachises. Fig lies within a
group of Chenopodietea weeds (Chenopodium album,
Polygonum aviculare). Grape is associated with moistureindicating
plants (Eleocharis uniglumis/palustris, Carex
divulsa), which might well, although they cannot be considered
as weeds, indicate the natural habitat on the slopes of the river
Scamander, possibly browsed by animals whose dung was
used for fuel.
Comparing the patterns of the scatter plots with those from the
Early Bronze Age data, there is not such a distinct separation
of the horticultural crops and the cereals, although the Middle
Bronze Age samples were not apparently from more mixed
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