Organic Additives of the Clay Layers: Plant Materials

Abstract

The organic additives of the clay layers consist of plant material and hairs. The undercoat contains chaff and hair, sometimes in tufts. The finish coat contains fine and mostly well distributed amounts of hair. The organic additives found in the undercoat can be macroscopically identified as leaves and stems as well as parts of infructescences like husks and grains. At least the latter can be interpreted as residues of threshing. The analysis was made on the base of botanical characteristics.56 For this method leaves, parts of flowers or seeds are required. Fortunately, the materials imbedded in the clay plasters contained sufficient amounts of different parts of the plants. The samples selected for the analysis are listed in table 1. Results