Recreating early medieval oat biscuits: experimental archaeology

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.

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.

Corncockle: a noxious weed in medieval Ireland?

Corncockle (from Wikimedia Commons)

Corncockle (Agrostemma githago) has been in the news recently after the BBC programme, Countryfile, offered viewers free packets of wild flower seeds via the Grow Wild project run by Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. These packets included seeds of corncockle, a colourful wild flower. Corncockle can, however, be poisonous, hence the kerfuffle. Interestingly, quite a number of our most popular garden plants are poisonous, including daffodils, ivy, lupins and foxgloves. In the case of corncockle, you would need to ingest large quantities of the seed to be in danger, so it remains a favourite of gardeners wishing to add colour to a garden border.

But there was a time when corncockle was a troublesome plant because of its poisonous qualities. During the medieval period in Ireland (c. AD 1150 to 1500) in particular, corncockle was an abundant arable weed, growing alongside crops and sometimes inadvertently harvested. Corncockle seeds are quite similar in size to cereal grains, so great effort would have been required to remove corncockle seeds from cereal grains when preparing foods. If corncockle seeds were not removed, the seeds would have affected both the colour and the taste of flour, and if eaten in large enough quantities, could have affected the health of the consumer. Indeed Gerard’s 16th century Herball (history of plants) noted “what hurt it doth among corne, the spoile of bread, as well in colour, taste, and unwholesomnesse, is better knowne than desired” (Woodward 1994, 252). 

Corncockle seeds (from Wikimedia Commons)

Despite the importance of removing corncockle seeds from cereals, our ancestors were not always successful in this regard. Corncockle seeds have been found during scientific analysis of deposits from archaeological excavations in Ireland, most recently at the just published Hiberno-Norse (Viking) and medieval excavations at South Main Street in Cork. My analysis of deposits discovered that tiny fragments of corncockle seeds were present in what appears to be cess (human faeces) at South Main Street (McClatchie 2014). It is likely that corncockle was consumed because the fragmented seeds had not been properly removed from the cereal grains. Similarly, pellets of hardened faeces from Hiberno-Norse Dublin contained fragments of corncockle seeds, suggesting that they were also consumed inadvertently with cereals (Geraghty 1996, 31).


So there was a time when care was needed in dealing with corncockle. But due to the increased use of herbicides and other grain cleaning techniques, corncockle is now largely extinct as an arable weed in Ireland, and hence there is little chance of it being incorporated into foods. The rarity of corncockle, as well as its beauty, now encourages gardeners to continue propagation of this interesting plant.

References
Geraghty, S (1996) Viking Dublin: botanical evidence from Fishamble Street. Royal Irish Academy: Dublin 

McClatchie, M (2014) 9.1.1 Non-wood plant macro-remains, 429-447. In MF Hurley and C Brett (eds), Archaeological excavations at South Main Street 2003-2005. Cork City Council: Cork

Woodward, M (ed.) (1994) Gerard's Herbal. Senate: London

New book: agriculture in early medieval Ireland

Together with my collaborators at University College Dublin and Queen’s University Belfast, I am delighted to see that our new book on agriculture in early medieval Ireland has been published. The book details results from a major research project on archaeological evidence for animals and plants in Ireland during the period AD 400—1100. Agriculture is an important aspect of Irish identity today, and it is fascinating to discover that we had a thriving agricultural landscape on the island more than 1000 years ago.

The project 

This project formed part of the Heritage Council-funded Early Medieval Archaeology Project (EMAP), a collaborative research initiative between University College Dublin and Queen's University Belfast, supported by the state Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht in the Republic of Ireland. The project brought together experts in early medieval settlement, animal husbandry and crop cultivation, providing a great opportunity to collaborate and compare results from different types of evidence.

The research 

The early medieval period was a time of enormous economic and social change across western Europe. Key amongst these changes were innovations in agriculture, enabling food production on an unprecedented scale. In Ireland, careful scientific work over the past few decades has revealed extensive, high-quality evidence for farming, mainly in the form of preserved animal bones and the grains, chaff and seeds of plants. We also have widespread archaeological evidence for farming, including the remains of farmsteads, field enclosures, kilns and mills. This book brings together this detailed evidence for the first time, revealing new insights into what was being farmed, how farming was undertaken, and what these activities meant for broader society.

New discoveries: legumes

Some of the new discoveries detailed in our book relate to regional differences in early medieval agriculture. I am particularly curious about legumes (such as peas and beans), and I was interested to learn that evidence for legumes was restricted to the east and south of Ireland. Indeed, the east and south displayed more diversity in all types of crops when compared with other regions. Perhaps the soils and climate in the east and south were better suited to arable farming, much as they are today. The management of crops (including soil preparation and application of manures) and cultural preferences would also have played a role in distinguishing who grew legumes and why.

Back to the modern day, and I am looking forward to the harvest of pea plants in my own garden, reflecting on the fact that I am continuing a practice that has a very long history in Ireland.

Reference

McCormick F, Kerr TR, McClatchie M, O'Sullivan A (2014) Early Medieval Agriculture, Livestock and Cereal Production in Ireland, AD 400—1100. Archaeopress, Oxford.

Apples in early historic Ireland: insights from law texts and archaeobotany

This weekend, I will be attending a conference in honour of Professor Fergus Kelly on the occasion of his retirement. Prof. Kelly’s studies of early Irish law texts have had a profound influence on our understanding of Ireland during the early historic period. His work is also a pleasure to read, being written in an engaging style that helps transport the scholar ‘back in time’.

One of Prof. Kelly’s books, “Early Irish Farming” (Kelly 1997), is a key resource for archaeologists interested in finding out about daily life in early medieval Ireland (AD 400-1100). It is a text that I return to again and again. The book provides an account of farming practices as detailed in law texts from the seventh and eighth centuries AD. A wide variety of topics is addressed, including domestic animals, cultivated crops from fields and gardens, wild animals and plants, food products, farm layouts, land tenure, farm labour, and tools and technology. It is indeed a comprehensive review of many different aspects of farming practice.

One section of the book deals with fruit crops, and I was interested to read about Prof. Kelly’s findings on apples (Malus spp.). Apples are a very useful resource, particularly because they are easy to store. Their period of use can be extended even further by cutting the apples into rings and then drying them over a fire. Do we have archaeobotanical evidence for ancient apples?

The answer is yes. Archaeobotanical evidence indicates that Ireland’s earliest settlers (Mesolithic, 8000-4000 BC and Neolithic, 4000-2500 BC) would have had access to Malus sylvestris, wild apple (McClatchie et al. 2012; Warren et al. 2013). Charred pips and core fragments (endocarp) of wild apple have been found at a number of excavations, most recently at the famous portal tomb of Poulnabrone, Co. Clare (McClatchie 2014).

Charred and waterlogged apple pips and endocarp fragments have also been found at early medieval excavations in Ireland, including the Viking towns of Waterford and Dublin (Geraghty 1996; Tierney and Hannon 1997). Do these early medieval remains represent wild apples or cultivated apples? Unfortunately, it can be difficult to distinguish between the two categories simply by looking at the gross morphology (appearance) of the preserved seeds and endocarp fragments.

Prof. Kelly’s studies of the early law texts have revealed, however, that there was a generally recognised distinction between the sour wild apple and sweeter cultivated types (Kelly 1997, 259). Kelly notes that the ninth-century text Bethu Brigte refers to an abundant crop of sweet apples, ubla cumra, in a churchyard, while an eighth-century law text refers to a wild apple, fiaduball (Kelly 1997, 259-260).

Is there any potential for archaeological science to contribute further to our understanding of apples in the past? Analysis of the ancient DNA of apple remains may be useful here, with a view to distinguishing between different categories of apples. Waterlogged archaeobotanical remains of apples are suitable for aDNA analysis, and this is an avenue of research that would be worth pursuing.

References

Geraghty S (1996) Viking Dublin: botanical evidence from Fishamble Street. Royal Irish Academy, Dublin 

Kelly, F (1997) Early Irish farming. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Dublin 

McClatchie M (2014) Non-wood macrofossil analysis. In: A Lynch, Poulnabrone: an early Neolithic portal tomb in Ireland. Archaeological Monograph Series: 9. Dublin, Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Dublin, pp 158-161

McClatchie M, Bogaard A, Colledge S, Whitehouse N, Schulting R, Barratt P, McLaughlin R (2012) Neolithic farming in north-western Europe: archaeobotanical evidence from Ireland. Journal of Archaeological Science. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2012.10.022 

Tierney J, Hannon M (1997) Plant remains. In: Hurley MF, Scully OMB, McCutcheon SWJ (eds), Late Viking Age and medieval Waterford: excavations 1986-1992. Waterford Corporation, Waterford, pp 854-899

Warren G, Davis S, McClatchie M, Sands R (2013) The potential role of humans in structuring the wooded landscapes of Mesolithic Ireland: a review of data and discussion of approaches. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00334-013-0417-z

Environmental archaeology: standardisation of approaches in the Republic of Ireland

Dealing with disparate datasets

During recent years, I have been involved in several major research projects that undertook analysis of archaeobotanical data from large numbers of excavations. These projects include “Cultivating Societies”, “EMAP” and my current postdoctoral project. In each project, I tracked down individual excavation reports that contained relevant archaeobotanical data. I then entered the archaeobotanical data into a project database, which allowed me to analyse the data in more detail and build up the ‘big picture’.

Unfortunately, I have found that there is no standardised approach towards environmental sampling and reporting of archaeobotanical data in Ireland. This has resulted in difficulties for me and other researchers trying to compare disparate datasets.

Standardisation: new environmental guidelines
In order to address this problem, I have been working with the National Roads Authority in Ireland to develop guidelines on the retrieval, analysis and reporting of palaeoenvironmental remains recovered during archaeological excavations on road schemes. The NRA is the largest procurer of archaeological services in the Republic of Ireland, and the new guidelines will be implemented on their projects. The guidelines enable a standardised approach, ensuring that palaeoenvironmental work conforms to the best professional standards, and is focused on achieving high-quality and scientifically meaningful results.

The guidelines focus on certain categories of remains, including plant macro-remains, charcoal, wood, pollen and insects. The guidelines were written by me and a colleague, Dr Ellen O Carroll, who is an expert in charcoal, wood and pollen analysis. Contributions on insects were also provided by Dr Eileen Reilly.

Workshop to explain guidelines
In order to introduce and explain these new guidelines to colleagues, Dr O Carroll and I will be leading a workshop next week entitled “Implementation and operation of NRA palaeoenvironmental sampling guidelines”. The workshop will form part of the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programme developed by the Institute of Archaeologists of Ireland; the CPD programme helps to maintain and broaden the skill base and standards of professional archaeologists in Ireland. Further information on the workshop can be found here. Hope to see you there!