Phytoliths from Cloggs Cave, GunaiKurnai country (southeastern Australia) reveal the gathering of whole grasses for burning practices inside the cave

Le résumé fourni par la source

Archaeobotanical evidence paired with GunaiKurnai cultural knowledge has established that plants were central to activities of the Old Ancestors in Cloggs Cave, GunaiKurnai Country. Here, we undertake a study of phytoliths from the stratified archaeological deposits to provide a complimentary line of evidence of people–plant relations across 25,000 years of cave engagement. Alongside the phytoliths of the archaeological sediments, we analyse the phytolith contents of individual, well-preserved buried possum scats to better clarify animal vs. anthropic processes of phytolith deposition in the cave. We found burnt phytoliths to be an unequivocal indicator of human activities related to plants and their subsequent accumulation within the cave. Phytoliths from grasses dominate the archaeological assemblage, while woody plant phytoliths and ash pseudomorphs of woody plants were detected in low amounts or are otherwise absent. Phytolith morphotypes from all parts of the grass plant including the inflorescences and leaves/culms indicate that the Old Ancestors intentionally selected and transported whole grass plants to the cave. Burnt phytoliths from all anatomical parts of grasses were identified from thin, laterally expansive ashy layers, suggesting that the grasses were brought into the cave to create layers of ash. With the exception of burnt phytoliths, we were unable to unequivocally discriminate between phytoliths that accumulated via the activities of people vs. those of possums (through their scats). It is, therefore, probable that in the non-ashy layers, the phytoliths represent a mixture of plants that entered the cave through the activities of both people and animals. Issues inherent in phytolith analysis, namely morphotype redundancy and differential phytolith production, limit the paleoecological inferences that can currently be made from the Cloggs Cave phytoliths, and demonstrate the value of analysing multiple independent botanical proxies to reveal how people used plants in the past.

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