² This is a more general problem pertaining to environmental archaeology when the collection of bioarchaeological material is not integrated into the archaeological excavation programme. Very often excavators collect only what they can see by eye, whereas the data are nearly always not visible by naked eye, especially under the conditions of the field. This is why sampling is conducted, in order to counteract the invisibility of much of this category of data. Sarpaki, A., ‘The study of palaeodiet in the Aegean: food for thought’, in Vaughan, S. J. and Coulson, W. D. E. (eds), Palaeodiet in the Aegean (Oxford, 2000), 115–21Google Scholar.

³ The hue is even less visible when the cereal flour is produced from hulled grains (e.g. hulled barley) as there are glume impurities, often silicified and/or mineralized, which mask the darker colour difference.

⁴ The parts of the cereal grain that turns into flour when ground.

⁵ Water flotation of material thought of as flour would be detrimental to it as most of the fine silicified and/or mineralized glume parts would disintegrate and would be washed away together with the ‘flour’ itself. The only way to save this material is to collect it en masse and study it as it is (unwashed) under the microscope.

⁶ They are visible only when large quantities are available.

⁷ This work was centred on the questions of the beginnings of agriculture; the role of plants for investigating human behaviour was hardly touched upon.

⁸ It is common for excavators to find organic remains near metal objects, especially copper/bronze, but also stones with a high lime content have also been known to mineralize textiles. This last example has been detected at Akrotiri. Moreover, at the site, other modes of preservation persist, silicification, for certain plant parts such as awns, glumes, and sometimes embryos of cereals.

⁹ Sarpaki, A., ‘The palaeoethnobotanical study of the West House, Akrotiri, Thera’, BSA 87 (1992), 219–30Google Scholar; ead., ‘Small fields or big fields? This is the question’, in Hardy, D. A. et al. (eds), Thera and the Aegean World, ii (London, 1992), 422–32Google Scholar.

¹⁰ For a more extensive discussion on this point see Sarpaki 1992 (n. 9), 423 n. 9.

¹¹ The ‘wells’ (or πεσσόϛ,) are the areas which have been excavated from 1998–2001 for placing the foundations of the new shelter of the site.

¹² Hearths are not included as a source, because seed were preserved in storage pottery.

¹³ Some experiments have already been conducted for understanding the processing of cereals in the cultures of first farmers in Central Europe, such as for the Linear Pottery Culture (LBK or Linear Bandkeramik), Balke, J. Meurers and Lüning, J., ‘Experimente zur Verarbeitung von Spelzgetreuiden’, in Fansa, M., Renken, B., and Döring, J. (eds), Experimentelle Archäologie in Deutschland (Oldenburg, 1990), 93–112Google Scholar. See also iid., ‘Some aspects and experiments concerning the processing of glume wheats’, in P. Anderson (ed.), Préhistoire de l'agriculture: nouvelles approches expérmentales et ethnographiques (Paris, 1992), 341–62. Another interesting article on experiments in milling is Währen, M., ‘Brote und Getreidebrei von Twann aus dem 3. Jahrtausend vor Christus’, Archéology suisse, 7. 1 (1984), 2–6Google Scholar; see too id., Brot und Gebäck im Leben und Glauben des Alten Orients (Bern, 1967).

¹⁴ Dickinson, C., ‘Experimental processing and cooking of emmer and spelt wheats and the Roman army diet’, in Robertson, D. (ed.), Experimentation and Reconstruction in Environmental Archaeology (Oxford, 1990), 33–9Google Scholar; ead., ‘The identification of cereals from ancient bran fragments’, Circaea, 4(2), 95–102Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Yialouri, E., ‘Processing of cereals during the Neolithic and the Bronze Age: experimental approaches’ (in Greek, and English summary), in Our Bread: From Wheat to Bread (Athens: ETVA, 1994), 55–76Google Scholar. She did a few experiments, with dehusking hulled grain; the results are very interesting and seem to agree with Foxhall, L. and Forbes, H. A., ‘Σιτομετρεία: the role of grain as a staple food in Classical Antiquity’, Chiron, 12 (1982), 41–90Google Scholar. They also concluded that the dehusking of the grain is better accomplished by wetting the grain before dehusking rather than by parching it, and further found that pounding and rubbing on a stone surface but with a wooden pestle produced coarse barley flour (ibid. 77). From Turkey, Hillman, G., ‘Traditional husbandry and processing of archaic cereals in recent times: the operations, products and equipment which might feature in Sumerian texts, part I: the glume wheats’, Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture, 1 (1984), 114–52Google Scholar, has recorded all the stages of crop processing.

¹⁶ See reference from previous note.

¹⁷ Meurers-Balke and Lüning 1992 (n. 13); Yialouri (n. 15); Foxhall and Forbes (n. 15); Dickinson 1990 (n. 14); Hillman (n. 15).

¹⁸ T. Devetzi, who is studying the mortars, claims that most mortars are found with no pestles and, therefore, hypothesizes that they might have been made of wood. (Devetzi, T., ‘Stone vessels–tools’ (Greek with English summary), in Doumas, Ch. (ed.), Ακρωτήρι Θήραϛ, είκοσι χρόνια έρευναϛ (1967–1987) (Athens, 1992), 119–28)Google Scholar.

¹⁹ e.g. Hillman (n. 15); id., ‘Interpretation of ancient plant remains: the application of ethnographic models from Turkey’, in W. van Zeist and W. A. Casparie (eds), Plants and Ancient Man: Studies in Palaeoethnobotany (Rotterdam, 1984), 141; id., ‘Traditional husbandry and processing of archaic cereals in recent times, part II: the free-threshing cereals’, Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture, 2 (1985), 1–31; G. E.Jones, ‘Interpretations of archaeological plant remains: ethnographic models from Greece’, in van Zeist and Casparie, op. cit. 43–61.

²⁰ This has already been dealt with for the West House in Sarpaki, A., ‘The Palaeoethnobotany of the West House, Akrotiri, Thera: A Case Study’ (Ph.D. diss., Sheffield, 1987)Google Scholar; cf eid., ‘A palaeocthnobotanical study of the West House, Akrotiri, Thera’, BSA 87 (1992), 219–30Google Scholar. The next house to be studied in detail, although there has been a short interlude with the preliminary study of the ‘wells’ (πεσσοί), will be the House of the Ladies.

²¹ Generally speaking ‘bulgur’ is understood as cracked wheat but here we refer to it as cracked barley too.

²² Fava (legume meal) is detected when studying the cracked pulses under a stereoscope microscope and recording that the cotyledons are split into two, the testa is missing, but the cotyledons are bruised in such a way (fragments broken off) as is detectable from the mechanical damage affecting them during excavation. Very often, when pulses are stored whole but charring destroys the testa, some cotyledons still continue to be attached to each other—often with fragments of testa adhering to them—but most important is the fact that the cotyledons are not cracked, especially when they are stored in pottery.

²³ Pulse flour is identifiable from fava as being crushed legumes very finely ground but still detectable under a microscope.

²⁴ Δ 8a, M26, 11.7.1994; Δ16, 22.9.1971, Π33.

²⁵ It is very important to remember that the site of Akrotiri is not fully excavated, not even the part in the plan shown here. The only areas which have been excavated to the ground floor are the West House, the House of the Ladies, and Xeste 3. In the first, a grinding-bench has been found, whereas the entrance of the House of the Ladies has not been excavated owing to problems of the building's stability, and the possible find of a bench there, although it must be considered fairly unlikely, could not be totally excluded. Xeste 3, on the other hand has an installation that A. Moundrea-Agrafioti ‘Μυλώνεϛ και διαδικασίεϛ άλεσηϛ στο Ακρωτήρι’ (unpublished conference for the 30 years of Akrotiri) has called a milling bench. In this case, two of the three buildings seem to have private milling benches.

²⁶ In this room were found the lively Spring Fresco and many cooking vessels (see Doumas, Ch., The Wall Paintings of Thera (Athens, 1992)Google Scholar; Sarpaki, A., ‘Plants chosen to be depicted on Theran wall paintings: tentative interpretations’, in Sherratt, S. (ed.), The Wall Paintings of Thera (Athens, 2000), 657–80Google Scholar, esp. 659–60). See also the fairly numerous samples of flour found in that room (TABLE 1).

²⁷ Devetzi (n. 18), 125. These are not typical quernstones and are more elaborate and decorative, but it is interesting to note that the flour of room 6 was also found in the same room.

²⁸ At Akrotiri, understandably, benches have only been found on ground floors.

²⁹ Cracked wheat (πληϒούρι) today is used instead of rice or potatoes in some Greek dishes, but it could also be used in soups (τραχανάϛ).

³⁰ J. Hansen, ‘Palaeoethnobotany and palaeodiet in the Aegean region: notes on legume toxicity and related pathologies’, in Vaughan and Coulson (n. 2), 13–27, and esp. 22–3. Although some scholars claim that forms of cooking involving high temperatures appear to deprive the Lathyrus spp. of their harmful effects, yet others insist that neurolathyrism was still present in some frequency amongst people who were roasting and boiling and making legume flour. Fava beans seem to have been eaten in small quantity at Akrotiri, so there is no reason to discuss the problem of favism, caused by these legumes.

³¹ It is well known that storage of flour is not viable for long periods of time, as either insects and/or mosses attack it, or it becomes mouldy. We know that cereals and legumes are preserved better and longer if the seed is not bruised (and for legumes if it preserves its testa); if not ground/pounded they can be stored for periods of 1–2 years.

³² Allbaugh, L. G., Crete: A Case Study of an Underdeveloped Area (Princeton, NJ, 1953)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³³ A. Sarpaki, ‘Bread in the Aegean in prehistory’, paper delivered at the XIII International Congress of Prehistory and Protohistoric Sciences, Forlî, Italy, 8–14 September 1996 (forthcoming), Abstracts, 1. 63–4. The ‘breads’ of Akrotiri are under study by the present author together with Delwen Samuel.

³⁴ Emmer has been found in very small numbers so far, and always as a contaminant within other crop plants.

³⁵ They are very similar to braziers (μαϒκάλια in the Cretan dialect) which were used as multiple function utensils, such as for heating and ‘fast’ cooking, for grilling chestnuts, baking potatoes, etc. The fuel used was crushed olive stones (called πυρήναϛ in the west of Crete), which are the by product of olive-oil production.

³⁶ Fava has already been found at LBA Thebes, sec Jones, G., ‘An early find of “fava” from Thebes’, BSA 88 (1993), 103–4Google Scholar; bulgur was also found at the prehistoric settlement of Mesimeriani Toumba (Thrace); pers. comm. by T. Valamoti, who is studying the material (forthcoming).

³⁷ I have started microscopic examination of the amorphous substances which seem to come from plant remains; for convenience they have been termed ‘bread’. So, for our present purpose, ‘bread’ is the term used for an organic material (plant) made into a dough.