Archaeology

Identification of macroremains is then usually carried out under a stereomicroscope, using morphological features such as shape and surface features in the case of seeds, or microanatomy in the case of wood or charcoal. Identification literature as well as a comparative collection of modern plant materials are crucial for reliable results. Depending on the type of material, and its condition, also other methods such as thin sections or SEM are applied.

Paleoethnobotanists also recover a...

Paleoethnobotanists use a variety of methods to recover and identify plant remains. One method used to recover macroremains (objects larger than 100 µm, but smaller than 10 cm) is to sieve excavated material manually in a water bath in order to allow the organic material to float to the surface.

This method is known as flotation. The matrix (the soil from a suspected archaeological feature) is slowly added to agitated water. The soil, sand, and other heavy material, known as heavy...

'Environmental archaeology 'is a sub-field of archaeology and is the science of reconstructing the relationship between ancient peoples and the environments they lived in. The field is an archaeological-palaeoecological approach to examining the paleoenvironment.

This field aims to understand whether the environment of ancient peoples was a driving force in cultural change or merely a factor in its development. Reconstructing past environments gives archaeologists insight as to what ad...