EXPERIMENTS ON THE EFFECTS OF CHARRING ON CEREAL PLANT-COMPONENTS

The grain, chaff and straw of einkorn, emmer, spelt, bread wheat and six-row barley were subjected to heating, varying the temperature, duration of heating and amount of oxygen available. Some components (and, to a lesser extent, some species) were more readily carbonized or destroyed than others. In the study of charred archaeological assemblages, therefore, allowance must be made for differential preservation under certain conditions. © 1990.