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Faculty of Arts and HumanitiesDepartment of Prehistoric Archaeology

An interdisciplinary toolkit to study burnt prehistoric daub

This project aims to establish an interdisciplinary method kit as a new standard in archaeological research on daub. daub fragments are the remains of prehistoric houses made of wattle and clay, the clay parts of which have hardened by fire, while the wooden framework has not survived. The project brings together existing methodological approaches to enable a more comprehensive research and social interpretation of the building materials.

According to the methodological specialization of the researchers, previous archaeological research has focused on one of four characteristics of daub:

  1. The shape of daub fragments was documented in order to reconstruct details about construction methods such as wall thickness and the structure of the wooden framework (Chetwin 2007; Jongsma 1997; Sherard 2009; Stevanović 1997).
  2. Secondly, clay used for building was examined using geoarchaeological and micromorphological methods to characterise the sediments used in construction, e.g. grain size proportions or the identification of temper. Such scientific techniques were also used to estimate the temperature of the house fire that hardened the clay (Cammas 2018; Forget et al. 2015; Love 2012, 2013; Nodarou et al. 2008; Röpke and Dietl 2017; Sapir et al. 2018; Shahack-Gross et al. 2018).
  3. Third, daub has also been extensively studied archaeobotanically, not least because plant remains (imprints, macroremains, phytoliths) are often well preserved in the clay (Dal Corso et al. 2018; Hovsepyan and Willcox 2008; Newton 2004; Seltzer and Peacock 2011; Stika 2005).
  4. And fourthly, macrobotanical remains and phytoliths in the clay can be radiocarbon dated (Chmielewski et al. 2017; Piperno 2006). The time of house construction or conversion phases can be determined more precisely than with the usual indirect dating, e.g. by dating of layers under and above the floor.

So far, however, no research project has systematically analyzed all four characteristics of daub through the integration of several techniques: architectural form, sediments, plant components, and direct dating. Our project wants to establish this interdisciplinary approach as a new standard in the archaeological research of lignite clay. By recording all the characteristics of daub, our project aims to create a more comprehensive picture of prehistoric building and to research social structures in the settlements examined.

We are currently working on daub from the following localities:

  • Toboliu, Romania (Bronze Age) Borsodivánka, Hungary (Bronze Age) Vrbjanska Čuka, North Macedonia (Neolithic)

Project direction: Dr. Jana Anvari, Dr. Astrid Röpke, Prof. Dr. Tobias Kienlin

References

Cammas, Cécilia, 2018, Micromorphology of earth building materials: Toward the reconstruction of former technological processes (Protohistoric and Historic Periods). Quarternary International 483:160-179.

Chetwin, James, 2007, The remains of wattle and daub structures. In The Origins of the Civilization of      Angkor volume 2: The Excavation of Noen U-Loke and Non Muang Kao, edited by Charles Higham, pp. 447-464. Fine Arts Department of Thailand, Bangkok.

Chmielewski, Tomasz, Agata Sady, Tomasz Goslar, Mirosław Furmanek, and Jiři Juchelka, 2017, Separating the wheat from the chaff: Dating charred plant remains extracted from daub (with reference to the 14C chronology of the Epi-Lengyel Culture in Upper Silesia). Radiocarbon 59(1):251–268.

Dal Corso, Marta, Welmoed Out, René Ohlrau, Robert Hofman, Stefan Dreibrodt, Mykhail Videiko, Johannes Müller, and Wiebke Kirleis, 2018, Where are the cereals? Contribution of phytolith analysis to the study of subsistence economy at the Trypillia site Maidanetske (ca. 3900-3650 BCE), central Ukraine. Journal of Arid Environments 157:137-148.

Forget, Mathilde, Lior Regev, David Friesem, and Ruth Shahack-Gross, 2015, Physical and mineralogical properties of experimentally heated chaff-tempered mud bricks: Implications for reconstruction of environmental factors influencing the appearance of mud bricks in archaeological conflagration events. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 2:80–93.

Hovsepyan, Roman, and George Willcox, 2008, The earliest finds of cultivated plants in Armenia: evidence from charred remains and crop processing residues in pisé from the Neolithic settlements of Aratashen and Aknashen. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 17 Suppl 1:S63–S71.

Jongsma, Tina, 1997, Distinguishing pits from pit houses through daub analysis: The nature and location of Early Neolithic Starčevo-Criş houses at Foeni-Salaş, Romania. Unpublished MA thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Manitoba.

Love, Serena, 2012, The Geoarchaeology of Mudbrick Architecture: A methodological study from Çatalhöyük, Turkey. Geoarchaeology 27:140-156.

Love, Serena, 2013, The Performance of Building and Technological Choice Made Visible in Mudbrick Architecture. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 23(2):263-282.

Naumov, Goce, Aleksandar Mitkoski, Hristijan Talevski, Jana Anvari, [13 other authors]. The Early Neolithic tell of Vrbjanska Čuka in Pelagonia. Prähistorische Zeitschrift 96(2):345-381

Newton, Claire, 2004, Plant tempering of Predynastic pisé at Adaïma in Upper Egypt: building material and taphonomy. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 13:55-64.

Nodarou, Eleni, Charles Frederick, and Anno Hein, 2008, Another (mud)brick in the wall: scientific analysis of Bronze Age earthen construction materials from East Crete. Journal of Archaeological Science 36:2997–3015.

Piperno, Dolores, 2006, Phytoliths: A Comprehensive Guide for Archaeologists and Paleoecologists. AltaMira Press, Oxford.

Röpke, Astrid, and Carlo Dietl, 2017, Burnt Soils and Sediments. In Archaeological Soil and Sediment Micromorphology, edited by Cristiano Nicosia, and Georges Stoops, pp. 173-180. Wiley Blackwell, Oxford.

Sapir, Yair, Assaf Avraham, and Avraham Faust, 2017, Mud-brick composition, archeological phasing and pre-planning in Iron Age structures: Tel ‘Eton (Israel) as a test-case. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 10:337–350.

Seltzer, Jennifer, and Evan Peacock, 2011, Determining the season of Mississippian house construction from plant impressions in daub. Southeastern Archaeology 30(1):123-133.

Shahack-Gross, Ruth, Ron Shaar, Erez Hassul, Yael Ebert, Mathilde Forget, Norbert Nowaczyk, Shmuel Marco, Israel Finkelstein, and Amotz Agnon, 2018, Fire and collapse: Untangling the formation of destruction layers using archaeomagnetism. Geoarchaeology 33(5):513-528.

Sherard, Jeffrey, 2009, Analysis of Daub from Mound V, Moundville: Its Role as an Architectural Indicator. Bulletin of the Alabama Museum of Natural History 27:29-42.

Stevanović, Mirjana 1997, The Age of Clay: The Social Dynamics of House Destruction. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 16:334–395.

Stika, Hans-Peter, 2005, Early Neolithic agriculture in Ambrona, Provincia Soria, central Spain. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 14:189–197.