martedì 19 ottobre 2010, ore 13,30 CONFERENZA STAMPA
per la presentazione delle scoperte effettuate nell’ambito del progetto di ricerca IIPP
“Le risorse vegetali nel Paleolitico” pubblicate ieri su PNAS
(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of USA)
presso la sede dell’Istituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protostoria
COMUNICATO
Thirty thousand-year-old evidence of plant food processing
Anna Revedin, Biancamaria Aranguren, Roberto Becattini, Laura Longo, Emanuele Marconi, Marta Mariotti Lippi, Natalia Skakun, Andrey Sinitsyn, Elena Spiridonova, Jiří Svoboda
Abstract
European Paleolithic subsistence is assumed to have been largely based on animal protein and fat, whereas evidence for plant consumption is rare. We present evidence of starch grains from various wild plants on the surfaces of grinding tools at the sites of Bilancino II (Italy), Kostenki 16–Uglyanka (Russia), and Pavlov VI (Czech Republic). The samples originate from a variety of geographical and environmental contexts, ranging from northeastern Europe to the central Mediterranean, and dated to the Mid-Upper Paleolithic (Gravettian and Gorodtsovian). The three sites suggest that vegetal food processing, and possibly the production of flour, was a common practice, widespread across Europe from at least ~30,000 y ago. It is likely that high energy content plant foods were available and were used as components of the food economy of these mobile hunter–gatherers.
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