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| Cooking oat biscuits at the edge of the fire |
Experimental archaeology can help us understand how people carried out daily tasks
in the past, revealing potential processes and social interactions involved in
various activities. It’s a very useful, hands-on way for students to gain new
insights into past societies. At the beginning of this month, I spent a very
enjoyable day teaching undergraduate students about ancient crops and foods as
part of the UCD School of Archaeology module “Experimental Archaeology and
Ancient Technologies”. We are very lucky at UCD to have an on-campus area to undertake
our experimental activities, the UCD Centre for Experimental Archaeology and
Ancient Technologies. We can re-construct houses, build pottery kilns, undertake
metalworking and many other tasks, all on campus!
As part of the “Experimental
Archaeology and Ancient Technologies” module, we spent a full day with students
on food-related activities. We processed crops from sheaf to grain using very
basic implements, ground the grain into flour using saddle and rotary quern
stones, and made a variety of stews and other food products.
One of our activities was the production of oat biscuits. We were inspired by the extraordinary find from Mick Monk
and his team excavating Lisleagh ringfort (early medieval enclosed settlement)
in Co. Cork (McLaren et al. 2004). They unearthed the charred remains of an oat biscuit,
which was analysed by archaeo-chemist Frances McLaren. She found that the
biscuit remains consisted of oatmeal and a low-fat dairy product, perhaps whey.
The inclusion of whey would have produced a low-fat biscuit
that could have been stored for a relatively long period. Whey is the liquid
remaining after milk has been curdled and strained to produce curds for cheese.
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| Curds (left), whey (centre) and oat dough for biscuits (right) |
First of all, we used the quern stones to grind oat
grains into flour. The oat grains were kindly donated by Flahavan’s oat mill in
Co. Waterford. We then needed to add a little whey to the oat flour. The
traditional method of converting fresh milk to curds and whey is to leave the
milk out for a few days. We used the method of heating the milk and adding an
acidic substance (e.g. vinegar).
After separating the curds from the whey (using a muslin cloth), we added a little whey to the oat flour to make a wet
dough. We took golf-ball sized lumps of the dough and flattened them out
with our hands into the shape of oat biscuits. We then cooked the biscuits on a
griddle at the edge of a fire for around half an hour. We learnt
just how much time is required for non-mechanised food production, which has important implications for understanding how past societies structured their days. We also appreciated that tasty
foods can easily be produced using basic ingredients and simple tools.
Reference
McLaren F,
Monk MA, Sexton R (2004) ‘Burning the biscuit’: evidence from the Lisleagh
excavations reveals new secrets twenty years on! Archaeology Ireland 18:18-20.
