Nuts about hazelnuts: the enduring tradition of foraging in Ireland

Hazelnuts (image via Orkney Jar)

Hazelnuts have been an important food resource in Ireland for thousands of years. Hazelnuts usually ripen during autumn and are therefore seasonal, but hazelnuts are also easily storable, and so can be kept for eating throughout the year. The nuts provide a highly nutritious foodstuff, being rich in monounsaturated fats. They can be eaten whole, or ground into flour or meal. Hazelnuts are also relatively easy to process using simple tools; the nutshell can be cracked open using a sharp stone, or by placing the hazelnut on a hard surface or stone, and then striking the shell with another stone.

While the actual nuts rarely survive in the archaeological record, hazelnut shell is often recorded. Hazelnut shell is relatively easily identified by archaeobotanists. The shape of the nutshell is very distinctive, and although the nutshell is woody, it is smooth in section when compared with wood charcoal. Hazelnut shell can be preserved through a variety of mechanisms, but charring is the most commonly encountered process in Ireland. In order for charring to occur, the plant material must come into contact with fire. Nutshell represents waste and is perhaps more likely to come into contact with fire and become preserved, when compared with other plants. For example, the nutshell can be utilised as fuel or simply disposed of in fires to reduce its mass. Other food sources, such as cereal grains, are less likely to enter a fire, as the grains will become unusable if charred (Jones 2000).

Charred hazelnut shell

While we often associate gathered foods with prehistoric societies (McComb and Simpson 1999), archaeobotanical evidence clearly demonstrates that foraging was an important activity right into the historic period. A recent study of plant foods consumed by Ireland’s earliest hunter-gatherer communities, during the Mesolithic period (8000-4000 BC), revealed that hazelnut remains were commonly found at excavations, sometimes in very large quantities (Warren et al. 2014). Although farming was introduced into Ireland during the Neolithic period (4000-2500 BC), gathered foods remained important; a study of plant remains from Neolithic excavations in Ireland found that hazelnut shell was present at 87% of sites (McClatchie et al. 2014). From the Bronze Age, it does appear that cultivated foods became increasingly important at the expense of gathered foods, but foraging continued to be undertaken. A recent study of plant remains from early medieval Ireland (AD 400-1100), for example, found that hazelnut shell was recorded at 40% of sites (McCormick et al. 2014), highlighting that gathered foods continued to play an important role, even in societies heavily involved in farming. There is a long history of hazelnut gathering and consumption in Ireland, and it looks set to continue, helped by a revived interest in foraging that has developed over recent years.

References

Jones G (2000) Evaluating the importance of cultivation and collecting in Neolithic Britain, pp. 79-84. In Fairbairn AS (ed.), Plants in Neolithic Britain and beyond. Neolithic Studies Group Seminar Papers 5. Oxford, Oxbow.  

 

McClatchie M, McCormick F, Kerr T, O'Sullivan A (2014) Early medieval farming and food production: a review of the archaeobotanical evidence from archaeological excavations in Ireland. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany. DOI: 10.1007/s00334-014-0478-7.

McComb AMG, Simpson D (1999) The wild bunch: exploitation of the hazel in prehistoric Ireland. Ulster Journal of Archaeology 58, 1-16.

McCormick F, Kerr TR, McClatchie M, O'Sullivan A (2014) Early medieval agriculture,livestock and cereal production in Ireland, AD 400–1100. British Archaeological Reports, International Series 2647. Oxford, Archaeopress.

Warren G, Davis S, McClatchie M, Sands R (2014) 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 23(5): 629–646.

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.