The Archaeology of Food has allowed us to rethink the origins of food products, the ways they were processed as well as the social implications involved in the processing activities. On this regard, microremains analyses – particularly starch grains analyses – provide of a wealth of information for specific, well understood archaeological contexts. Indeed, it is widely accepted that starch grains analyses can identify the processed plant foods at various taxonomic levels, but it has also been suggested that information about the processing methods applied to them can be obtained by looking at the changes in starch grain morphologies. However, whereas the changes in starch grains of some of the ‘founder crops’ through cooking processes have been already analysed and published, the transformation of the starch grains in wild plants still remains poorly understood. This thesis, therefore, aims to create a collection of reference which will provide valuable information for further research on ancient societies’ foodways.
From another perspective, Gastronomy & Food Science disciplines are now more interested than ever before in conveying cultural aspects such as the origins and development of different cooking techniques in human history. Several projects focusing on understanding how the different human communities before us interacted with their food resources have recently taken off. However, the lack of information for several extended periods of time in prehistory on the one hand, and the inherent difficulties that both gastronomes and food science researchers are experiencing when trying to understand the complexity of the archaeological outcomes on the other, is resulting into coarse interpretations and an overgeneralized explanation of the past. On top of that, in the last 20 years, the gastronomic sphere has widely demonstrated its power for creatively promoting and communicating numerous cultural and scientific concepts to people, hence providing of a brand new scenario for archaeology to spread cultural knowledge in new, sometimes more efficient ways.
In this regard, this thesis focuses on the analyses of the changes of starch grains from a selection of diverse starchy wild plants available during the season that this research is undertaken (autumn-winter) through the application of diverse cooking techniques (boiling, grinding, baking). The determination of the processes will be assessed by the merging of archaeological methods and gastronomic knowledge.
Finally, by combining the knowledge acquired through the study of both of them, this thesis will offer some of the guidelines to be undertaken for the development of this research in the future.
