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Grinding flour in Upper Palaeolithic Europe (25000 years bp)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Biancamaria Aranguren ,
Roberto Becattini ,
Marta Mariotti Lippi  and
Anna Revedin
Biancamaria Aranguren
Affiliation:
Archaeological Department of Tuscany, Florence, Italy (Email: [email protected])
Roberto Becattini
Affiliation:
Department of Plant Biology, Florence University, Italy (Email: [email protected]; [email protected])
Marta Mariotti Lippi
Affiliation:
Department of Plant Biology, Florence University, Italy (Email: [email protected]; [email protected])
Anna Revedin
Affiliation:
Italian Institute of Prehistory & Protohistory, Florence, Italy (Email: [email protected])
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Extract

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

Gravettiancat's tailflourgrindstonereedmacestarchTypha
Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 81 , Issue 314 , 1 December 2007 , pp. 845 - 855
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2007

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