Influence of grinding on the preservation of starch grains from rice

• Published in: Archaeometry 2020-02, Vol.62 (1), p.157-171
• Main Authors: Li, W., Pagán‐Jiménez, J. R., Tsoraki, C., Yao, L., Van Gijn, A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Archaeology; Barley; Grinding tools; Millet; ricegrinding techniquestarch grainsexperimental archaeologyNeolithic China; Starch
• ISSN: 0003-813X; 1475-4754
• DOI: 10.1111/arcm.12510

China is a major centre for rice domestication, where starch grain analysis has been widely applied to archaeological grinding tools to gain information about plant use by ancient Chinese societies. However, few rice starch grains have been identified to date. To understand this apparent scarcity of starch grains from rice, dry‐ and wet‐grinding experiments with stone tools were carried out on four types of cereals: rice (Oryza sativa L.), foxtail millet (Setaria italica), Job's tears (Coix lacryma‐jobi L.) and barley (Hordeum vulgare L.). The results reveal that dry‐grinding produces significant damage to starches to the point where they may be undetected in archaeological samples, while wet‐grinding causes only slight morphological changes to the starch grains. Moreover, rice starch grains have the most substantial alterations from dry‐grinding, possibly impeding their identification. These findings provide a possible means to explain the relative scarcity of rice starch grains recovered from archaeological grinding tools, which it is suggested was caused by the use of the dry‐grinding technique. Therefore, it is suggested that rice starch grains have been likely underrepresented in the archaeological record, and previous interpretations of starch analyses need to be reconsidered.