Resume

• 1980

  Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

  Anthropology and Archaeology

  Washington State University

• 1974

  Master of Arts (M.A.)

  Anthropology and Archaeology

  Texas Tech University

• History

  Academic Advising

  Museums

  College Teaching

  Teaching

  Cultural Resource Management

  Field Work

  Historic Preservation

  Public Speaking

  Science

  Higher Education

  Historical Archaeology

  Cultural Heritage

  Anthropology

  Grant Writing

  Research

  Archaeology

  Qualitative Research

  Prehistoric Archaeology

  Archival Research

  Baking Geophytes and Tracking Microfossils: Taphonomic Implications for Earth-Oven and Paleodietary Research

  Archaeologically oriented starch-granule and other plant-food microfossil research contribute to human subsistence studies primarily through analysis of residue adhering to plant processing tools. Little is known about whether or how plant-food microfossils may be present in remains of ancient earth ovens and other cooking facilities. Earth ovens with rock heating elements are found worldwide

  especially in savannah and fuel-poor regions; they date to about 30

  000 and 9

  000 years old in the Old and New Worlds

  respectively. Earth-oven baking is a cooking technology that effectively increases the availability of food in a given area by affording nutritional access to difficult-to-cook or toxic plant foods that would otherwise be indigestible. It effectively increases a landscape’s capacity to support population growth. Conventional-oven and lab-oven baking experiments assess the potential of ancient earth ovens to yield identifiable microfossils of underground storage organs (USOs) baked therein. During 15 min to 12 h of baking at 135–150 °C

  identifiable and degraded USO microfossils accumulated as part of baking residue on cloth coverings

  leafy packing materials

  the inside of the containers

  and on suspended microscope slides. Results of these taphonomic experiments indicate that an abundance of microfossils

  including starch granules

  phytoliths

  raphides

  and plant tissue

  are emitted from USOs during the baking process. As hypothesized

  these microfossils should be mobilized and dispersed in earth ovens per se during baking

  primarily via liquid and vapor forms of water. Illuviation and other transformation processes are expected to redeposit baked

  yet still identifiable

  plant-food microfossils on heating-element rocks.

  Baking Geophytes and Tracking Microfossils: Taphonomic Implications for Earth-Oven and Paleodietary Research

  Thoms

  Alston

  Texas A&M University

  Texas A&M University