FENLAND MANAGEMENT PROJECT REPORT NO 3: CHARRED PLANT MACROFOSSILS AND MOLLUSCS FROM MORTON FEN SALTERN, LINCOLNSHIRE (MOS 93)
Author(s): P Murphy
Charred plant macrofossils from the site were thought largely to represent residues from fuel used during brine evaporation. The assemblages were composed of cereal processing waste including weed seeds, chaff and grains, with remains of grassland and freshwater wetland plants and halophytes. Charcoal formed only a small proportion of the flots and there was no evidence for peat-burning. It appears that other plant materials were substituted as fuel locally. Barley was the main cereal crop represented. This is unusual at a rural Roman site in East Anglia, (spelt is almost invariably the predominant cereal represented), and is probably indicative of local cultivation on saline soils, for barley is the most salt-tolerant of cereals. Notes on mollusc shells present, mainly hydrobiids, are given, but these add little to the palaeoecological data from analysis of foraminifers and ostracods.
- Report Number:
- 42/1994
- Series:
- AML Reports (New Series)
- Pages:
- 6
- Keywords:
- Animal Remains Mollusca Plant Remains
