Starch Grain Analysis
Starch grain analysis recovers and identifies microscopic starch granules preserved on archaeological artifacts and in dental calculus to reconstruct ancient plant use. Many economically important plants — tubers, roots, seeds, and cereals — store energy as starch in granules whose size, shape, hilum position, and surface features can be diagnostic of a plant family, genus, or even species. Because starch can lodge in the use-wear pits of grinding stones, adhere to pottery, settle into sediments, and become trapped in calcified dental plaque, it survives where charred macroremains do not, opening a window onto plants such as manioc, potato, and banana that rarely carbonize. Under polarized light, intact starch shows a characteristic birefringent extinction cross, and identification proceeds by morphometric comparison to modern reference granules, following procedures consolidated in Pearsall's paleoethnobotanical handbook.
源记录
引文逐字复制自方法源记录。这些引文不代表任何层级的验证。
- Pearsall, D. M. (2015). Paleoethnobotany: A Handbook of Procedures (3rd ed.). Routledge / Left Coast Press. · ISBN 9781611322996
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