> Staffan Lindeberg <[log in to unmask]> wrote

> Andrew Millard wrote:
> >
> >On the other hand we do have farming cultures, notably the Pre-pottery
> >Neolithic of the Near East, where there is clearly massive reliance on
> >cereal crops but no pottery in which to cook them.  They clearly needed to
> >cook their crops, but we have little idea of how they did it.
>
> Could it be that they wrapped them in leaves and covered and baked them in
> the ground with heated stones like for instance the Trobriand Islanders and
> many others traditionally did? Would this leave any traces?

It is possible but we are talking about the earliest towns with large
numbers of people living together, and intensively farming the surrounding
area, and given that leaves are likely to be a one-use cooking vessel
their environmental impact would have been very great.  This might tie in
with what is known from 'Ain Ghazal (Jordan) where from the middle
Pre-pottery Neolithic B (PPNB c. 7200-6500 C14 years BP) through the late
PPNB (6500-6000 C14 BP) to PPNC (6000-5500 C14 BP) we see a decrease in
the size of posts used in construction.  The houses also had c.50 sq. m of
lime plaster floor each.  The excavator's interpretation was that it would
have consumed 10 mature trees per floor to make the plaster, and given the
keeping of domesticated goats, trees would not have regenerated, hence
there would have been deforestation.  The occupation reached its greatest
density in the late PPNB, in the PPNC we see types of house implying
changes in the structure of society, and in the following Yarmoukian
period occupation density was much less.  (Information from a seminar
given here by Gary Rollefson last December.)  But perhaps leaf use also
contributed to the deforestation?

Andrew Millard

 =========================================================================
 Dr. Andrew Millard                              [log in to unmask]
 Department of Archaeology, University of Durham,   Tel: +44 191 374 4757
 South Road, Durham. DH1 3LE. United Kingdom.       Fax: +44 191 374 3619
                      http://www.dur.ac.uk/~drk0arm/
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