Fueling the hearths in India : the role of dung in paleoethnobotanical interpretation

Abstract

Lors de l'analyse des restes de moissons provenant de sites archéologiques, les paléobotanistes se heurtent souvent au problème d'identification des graines trouvées dans des contextes qui ont pu contenir du combustible. Cet article présente les résultats de recherches ethnoarchéologiques - production et utilisation du fumier par les sociétés agricoles traditionnelles - conduites en Inde afin d'aider à l'identification de l'origine de graines recueillies dans les contextes archéologiques. L'effort a porté en particulier sur la distinction qu'il convient d'établir en Inde entre des activités effectuées dans les foyers et à leur proximité, sur les différences entre les divers types de foyers et de combustibles, et sur la nature du fumier. Ces nouveaux résultats s 'ajoutant à des études plus anciennes ayant porté sur les foyers alimentés avec du fumier vont permettre aux paléoethnobotanistes d'élargir la gamme des possibilités qu'il leur faudra tester.

Dung burning in the archaeobotanical record of West Asia: where are we now?

“…In the travel accounts of Ambrosio Bembo around 1672, he noted that the people of northern India feel a maternal connection to their bovine companions, who provide them with milk and dung (Bembo 2007). Ethnographers working among village women in the late 1950s in northern India and Pakistan noted that they preferred dung to wood because it burned at a low temperature for a long time; hence, a meal could be placed over a dung fire and the cook could then head to the fields to work (Lewis 1958;see also;Reddy 1999;Vaňkát et al 2010), but cooking with a wood fire often burnt the food and cracked the pots; this has changed with the introduction of brass cooking pots. In fact, an ethnographic study in 2000 suggested that the use of dung as fuel in India was a 1.5 billion dollar industry, comprising the equivalent fuel use of 43 million tons of coal (Harris 2000).…”

What goes in does not always come out: The impact of the ruminant digestive system of sheep on plant material, and its importance for the interpretation of dung-derived archaeobotanical assemblages

“…Dung could also be collected from wild animals such as deer (Miller 1996). Here, we focus on ruminant digestion of sheep, as ethnographic studies show that the dung of sheep is one of the most often used dung fuels (Vidyarthi 1984;Anderson and Ertug-Yaras 1998;Reddy 1998;Sillar 2000;MorenoGarcia and Pimenta 2011). Moreover, in Western Asia and Southern Europe sheep and cattle, likely sources of dung fuel, are often prominent in faunal assemblages from early farming sites (Legge 1996;Halstead 2006).…”

“…Investigation of this material generally starts with the assumption that they reflect aspects of human plant consumption. There is, however, a growing awareness that the charred plant remains record may, in certain regions, include a substantial proportion of material derived from the burning of animal dung as a fuel source, which calls such interpretations into question (Bottema 1984;Miller and Smart 1984;Miller and Gleason 1994; Miller 1996;1997;Charles 1998;Reddy 1998;Valamoti and Charles 2005). Indeed, the relatively low temperatures of dung-fuelled fires provide excellent conditions for charring of plant remains.…”

Preliminary ethnoarchaeological research on modern animal husbandry in Bestansur, Iraqi Kurdistan: Integrating animal, plant and environmental data

“…Studying the formation histories of the dung deposits and their archaeological identification and significance Macphail and Goldberg (1985), Canti (1998), Canti (1999 Charles (1998), Charles et al (1998), Forbes (1998), Jones (1998), Valamoti (2013) Secondary product use -dung as building material and source of fuel Watson (1979), Kramer (1982), Miller and Smart (1984), Miller (1996), Matthews et al (1997), Anderson and Ertug-Yaras (1998), Reddy (1999), Sillar (1999), Matthews (2008) results, and there is much scepticism over analytical performance (Frahm 2013;Frahm and Doonan 2013). Inter-instrument performance of pXRF equipment has proved that between different instruments statistically identical results are not produced (Goodale et al 2012).…”