KIEL, GERMANY—According to a Cosmos Magazine report, an analysis of residues on grinding stones discovered on a sandy island near the southwestern coast of the Baltic Sea has offered clues to the foods consumed by early farmers of the Funnel Beaker Culture who lived at the small village site of Oldenburg LA 77 between 3270 and 2920 B.C. “Even a small fragment [of a grinding stone] can carry plenty of plant microfossils, including starch grains and phytoliths,” said researcher Jingping An of Kiel University. Wheat, barley, the fruits of wild grasses, knotweeds, acorns, and tubers were identified in these residues. “Charred wild plants have been documented by archaeobotanical analyses of soil samples from this Neolithic village, but this study further confirms their consumption by looking directly into food processing,” added team leader Wiebke Kirleis. In contrast, only wild plant remains have been detected at Frydenlund, a Funnel Beaker Culture settlement on Denmark’s island of Funen. The evidence also suggests that people living at Frydenlund ate cereals as gruel or porridge, while cereals were ground into coarse fragments and fine flour at Oldenburg LA 77. “It is particularly interesting to see that the first farmers had similar interests in consuming wild plant foods, but differed in how they prepared their cereals,” Kirleis concluded. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. To read about the oldest known hunting structure that archaeologists found submerged in the Baltic Sea, go to "Reindeer Hunters' Wall," one of ARCHAEOLOGY's Top 10 Discoveries of 2024.
