![]() ![]() Archaeobotanists were already well aware of the fact that the presence of seeds in an archaeobotanical assemblage does not necessarily mean that they (or the plants that they came from) were economically significant (Minnis 1981). They presented the idea that small seeds from wild herbaceous plants recovered at archaeological sites could be the remains of dung fuel, especially in arid or high-elevation parts of the world. In the article, they “suggest that seeds can be brought to a site incorporated in animal dung and become charred when that dung is intentionally burned as fuel” (Miller and Smart 1984, p 16). While working at the 3rd millennium bc archaeological site of Maylan, Iran, they theorized a novel interpretation for their macrobotanical data. In 1984, Naomi Miller and Tristine Smart published an article in the Journal of Ethnobiology, which contained a seemingly straightforward observation, also noted two years earlier in Miller’s dissertation of 1982 and in Miller ( 1984). In West Asia, the most prominent of such seeds in dung assemblages are from the Amaranthaceae family, notably Chenopodium. However, interpreting these assemblages is not always simple and there are predictable biases that need to be taken into account, notably an overrepresentation of endozoochoric seeds (seeds dispersed through animal ingestion). Seed assemblages that represent herd animal dung are assisting scholars in understanding palaeoecology and herd animal diet in the past as well as human economy and pasturing practices. ![]() Herd animal dung is the dominant fuel source in many parts of West Asia today and the high densities of seeds of wild plants in archaeobotanical assemblages suggest that people were using dung as fuel across Inner Asia for millennia. As the number of systematic archaeobotanical studies across West Asia and many other parts of the world increase, we are continually confronted with the question of the significance of dung burning. ![]() In the early 1980s Naomi Miller changed the field of palaeoethnobotany her research into whether the ancient seed eaters of southwest Asia were human or herbivore opened an ongoing debate over the impact that burning of animal dung had on the formation of archaeobotanical assemblages, and how researchers can differentiate between human and animal food remains. ![]()
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