Plant categories

[RuthPelling]

Thank you to all those of attended the discussion meeting on Monday. We agreed on a simplified list of plant category types rather than taxa names, with a simple ubiquity score and a field to record if this included good numbers, eg, "oil crops", ubiquity 65%, includes samples with good numbers of items: yes. Following that discussion, the categories proposed are as shown below - we added a few and thought a selection of other categories would be useful as well. We can edit this list later, but do please give other categories you think we should include.

Plant categories
Cereal grain
Cereal chaff
Pulses
Oil/fibre crops
Fruits and nuts (wild)
Fruits and nuts (cultivated)
Other useful wild plants
Wild (other)
Flavourings
Exotics
Tubers/roots/rhizomes
Sprouted grain/detached coleoptiles

Other relevant categories present
Fungal remains
Mosses
Seaweed
Food residues/fragments

[RuthPelling]

NB there would be text fields for "notable taxa" and there is the overall summary box.

[wsmithMOLA]

may not be relevant - but possibly also things like Chara spp. or other algae

[RuthPelling]

We can also have an "other" category.

[LucyAllott]

Can we add roundwood? I think it's useful to know when an assemblage has significant quantities and it may be something that is recorded more widely than just by charcoal analysts.

[DanaChallinor]

@LucyAllott do you mean for whole stems like Ericaceae? I'm not averse to having it as an additional option, but I'm inclined to think that any wood should be recorded under the charred (or waterlogged) wood section rather than here. Unless it would be much simpler for inputting the data and provides an additional flag to presence...in any case, I would hope that significant quantities of roundwood would be analysed by a charcoal specialist and therefore fully recorded in its own section.

[LucyAllott]

@DanaChallinor Ah yes I may well be getting confused with where these things will be recorded and in with the wood section would be ideal. My thinking behind having it available for general recording is to cover those records that aren't analysed fully analysed but where roundwood may have been noted as part of assessment data. I think the locations of all this sort of thing will be easier to grasp when we see the full structure on the 15th.

[RuthPelling]

Yes, we were envisaging a separate additional charcoal field within the archaeobotany pages, that would include taxa, and "physical characteristics recorded". To be determined, but building on what we had discussed by email. The interpretation/evidence for field could then capture other aspects. We may decide that charcoal/waterlogged wood can be recorded in the same set of fields as macrofossils, or we might decide, as Dana suggests, a simplified version with the macrofossils pages, and a more detailed separate wood and charcoal system.

[LizPearson]

Are we getting into interpretation with flavourings? I'm ok with the others, though I use a shorter list in our reports.

[RuthPelling]

Yes, maybe. I guess exotics would capture things like coriander any way.
I was thinking things like medicinal plants and occasional vegetative food plants that might turn up in waterlogged deposits (onion, leek) are missing, but we have the "other" category.

[wsmithMOLA]

I think medicinal use is really tricky - and indeed Glynis Jones, Vanessa Straker & Anne Davis wrote on the difficulty of securely identifyng medicinal plants for London results:

Jones , G. E. M., Straker, V. and Davis, A. 1990 Early medieval plant use and ecology in the City of London. 347-88. In: Vince A. (ed). Aspects of Saxo-Norman London: II Finds and Environmental Evidence. _Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeology Society (Special Paper 12.)

I also thinks plants can be used for a variety of things - opium poppy seeds can be decorative for breads/ cakes; poppy seed oil is odourless and tasteless and well-recorded in the Roman period as an adulterant to olive oil; and opiate use (although I'm not aware that there are any scored pods recovered from the UK?). Mustards - greens/ oil/ flavouring/ liniments/ etc...

[LizPearson]

I've been thinking about medicinal plants lately (largely because I've been getting into using herbs medicinally). They are tricky because nearly every plant has medicinal uses. However, I started making a list of possible medicinal herbs from old assemblages where there's a possibility - so I started with Dudley Castle latrine and Worcester Sidbury barrel latrine. You can't prove any of them - especially as we expect a food or culinary herb use here. But, would it be worth making suggestions in the summary box (make it clear they're just suggestions)? Our specialist manager (Derek Hurst) and I both think, now, that if we don't do this (out of caution), we might be missing a trick. Derek used to ask me to consider medicinal use, and I always used to say "Oh, but you can't tell - they could just be natural vegetation". I'm changing my mind. In case anyone's interested, I have a scanned copy of a document called 'Peter Goff: Mercer and Apothecary, Worcester 1573' - very interesting.

[wsmithMOLA]

I think Liz raises a good point. In terms of future proofing OASIS+ Archaeobotany, we don't want to exclude options - it may be important later / we may have improved techniques/ methods/ etc...

I was just urging caution where medicinal plants are concerned (especially for native British flora) & think Liz's suggestion - to give options for both possible medicinal use and/or definite medicinal use seems very sensible.

[RuthPelling]

We've slipped into an old discussion thread here!