Open access: McMichael, C. N. H., Guerra, D., Witteveen, N. H., Heijink, B. M., Zwarts, A., Zuquim, G., Balslev, H., Ruokolainen, K., & Tuomisto, H. (2026). Soil phytolith assemblages reflect palm community composition in western Amazonia. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, 344, 105443.

Far from the old image of bruitish “proto” humans, Neanderthals were complex beings; who had specific ways of organizing thier homes!

Perfectly preserved ‘phytolith’ plant crystals reveal that Indigenous Australians brought grasses into a cave for ritual burning as far back as the last Ice Age. Layer after layer of ash lies buried inside Cloggs Cave, preserving evidence that people repeatedly carried whole grasses underground and burned them there for thousands of years. The cave is within the traditional lands of the GunaiKurnai, an Australian Aboriginal nation and the acknowledged custodians of Gippsland and the southern Victorian Alps. GunaiKurnai oral traditions and 19th-century ethnographic accounts describe caves in this region as places where powerful learned women and men known as ‘mulla-mullung,’ along with other spiritual practitioners, performed rituals involving magic, healing, and cursing. Archaeological evidence indicates that Old Ancestors visited Cloggs Cave for such activities across the past 25,000 years. “Here we show that the Old Ancestors selected whole grasses from the wider landscape and carried them into Cloggs Cave to spread out in thin layers and burn. Over time, sediments covered these burned layers, preserving each layer on top of another over thousands of years,” said Dr. Elle Grono, a postdoctoral researcher at the Australian National University and the corresponding author of a new study published in Frontiers in Environmental...

Perfectly preserved ‘phytolith’ plant crystals reveal that Indigenous Australians brought grasses into a cave for ritual burning as far back as the last Ice Age. Layer after layer of ash lies buried inside Cloggs Cave, preserving evidence that people repeatedly carried whole grasses underground and burned them there for thousands of years. The cave is [...]

A Australian cave site shows people burning grass, deliberately and repeatedly, for longer than agriculture has existed anywhere on Earth

YouTube video by Dirk Paessler

AbstractBackground. Archaeobotanists and palaeoecologists use geometric morphometrics extensively to identify plant opal phytoliths. Particularly when appl

Understanding the neolithisation process in northern Europe requires detailed knowledge of both the type of crop plants as well as gathered food plants from Neolithic Funnel Beaker sites (4000–2800 bce). However, although many sites from this culture are known, significant gaps remain in our knowledge on which taxa were used as well as on how plant food was prepared. Here, we present the results of combined plant macro- and microremains from the Early Neolithic site of Frydenlund in present-day Denmark. The macroremains include carbonised seeds, fruits and underground storage organs from a variety of contexts. The microremains are phytoliths and starch granules recovered from 14 grinding stones that are among the oldest from Denmark as well as the first from this region analysed using state-of-the-art methods. The data are discussed in the context of an updated overview of crop spectra, evidence of gathered plants and of plant food preparation techniques at Funnel Beaker sites in the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Sweden. The results from the Early Neolithic site of Frydenlund show that the macroremains assemblage was dominated by Triticum turgidum ssp. durum (durum wheat), T. turgidum ssp. dicoccum (emmer wheat) and Hordeum vulgare var. nudum (naked barley), which apart from durum wheat fits the observed pattern from other Funnel Beaker sites in northwestern Europe. These crops were presumably cultivated separately as summer crops. Corylus avellana (hazel), Rubus fruticosus (blackberry) and R. idaeus (raspberry) were probably consumed as well, and possibly R. caesius (dewberry). While cereals were abundant in the macroremains assemblage, the microremains from the grinding stones indicate that these were used for grinding solely wild plants. The carbonised cereal grain fragments are therefore interpreted as possible evidence of cereal consumption mainly in the form of porridge or gruel, which corresponds well to comparable finds at other contemporary northwestern European sites. Future analysis of comparable high-quality data on combined macro- and microremains analysis is necessary to further refine our understanding of plant diets and plant food preparation techniques of the Funnel Beaker Culture as well as during the neolithisation process.

AbstractBackground and Aims. The absence of a modern plant-based ‘dicotyledon’ phytolith reference baseline impedes the accurate interpretation of fossil p

Confidence in the correct identification of an object at the macroscopic and microscopic level is critical across the biological sciences including the fie

The Nyakach Formation of western Kenya provides a rare Middle Miocene (ca. 14–16 Ma.) terrestrial record bearing the monkey, Victoriapithecus macinnes…

Vegetation History and Archaeobotany - This study presents new phytolith evidence from 18 sediment samples at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic site of Beisamoun in the Hula Valley, northern Israel,...

AbstractBackground and Aims. Bamboo is a grass in the Poaceae family with various applications. Bamboo leaves can accumulate high silica. However, silica d

Cannabis sativa has probably been domesticated and utilized in Eurasia during the Early Neolithic (approximately 12,000 BP), undergoing strong diverge…

Cannabis sativa has probably been domesticated and utilized in Eurasia during the Early Neolithic (approximately 12,000 BP), undergoing strong diverge…

China's agricultural history with cannabis is deeper than previously believed, with a new study placing the staple crop among "the five grains" (alongside rice and barely, for example) that were foundational to the ancient Eurasian economy and "deeply integrated into the daily lives of the inhabitants." For the study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, researchers at Shandong University conducted phytolith extraction and analysis of 132 samples found in Beitaishang and Qianzhongzitou settlements dating back to the Late Neolithic era. The results showed that, by that point, cannabis had become a "core crop in northern China, primarily used for food or fiber."