Antiquity Vol 81:314, 2007 pp 845-855 - Biancamaria Aranguren et al. - Grinding flour in Upper Palaeolithic Europe (25000 years bp)

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Volume: 81 Number: 314 Page: 845–855

Grinding flour in Upper Palaeolithic Europe (25000 years bp)

Biancamaria Aranguren^¹, Roberto Becattini^², Marta Mariotti Lippi^² and Anna Revedin^³

¹Archaeological Department of Tuscany, Florence, Italy (Email: arangurenb@yahoo.it) ²Department of Plant Biology, Florence University, Italy (Email: robertobecattini@yahoo.it; mariotti@unifi.it) ³Italian Institute of Prehistory & Protohistory, Florence, Italy (Email: annarevedin@iipp.it)

The authors have identified starch grains belonging to wild plants on the surface of a stone from the Gravettian hunter-gatherer campsite of Bilancino (Florence, Italy), dated to around 25000bp. The stone can be seen as a grindstone and the starch has been extracted from locally growing edible plants. This evidence can be claimed as implying the making of flour – and presumably some kind of bread – some 15 millennia before the local ‘agricultural revolution’.

Keywords: Gravettian, cat's tail, flour, grindstone, reedmace, starch, Typha