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Andalusian Agriculture: A View from Medieval Menorca

Kathleen Forste, 2022 P.E. MacAllister Scholarship for Fieldwork Participation

Thanks to the ASOR Scholarship for Fieldwork Participation, I was able to join the Menorca Archaeology Project (MAP) in Spain to excavate a portion of the medieval settlement at the site of Torre d’en Galmés. This rural 13th century Islamic village, or alqueria, is built atop and abutting (and certainly borrowing from) the ruins of a large post-Talayotic (Iron Age) settlement, and by studying it we can better understanding what life was like during this period and how medieval lifeways have influenced later periods of life on Menorca.

I am the archaeobotanist on the team, meaning I study plant remains like wood charcoal, seeds, and plant parts. The analysis of these remains can help us answer questions about diet and foodways, the crops that people grew and the wild plants they collected, and the types of plant materials they used to build their houses and fuel their fires.

This season, our excavation focused on two houses, one of which was so well-preserved that the plaster on the interior walls and floor were still intact. These houses were built in the typical form of Muslim houses – multiple rooms formed an L that bordered 2 sides of a patio, which was enclosed by 2 other walls to create a private area for the family to relax and perform everyday tasks such as cooking and carding wool to make yarn. The room that was excavated we are interpreting to be a kitchen, based on the presence of hearths, grinding stones, cooking vessels, as well as parallels in construction to other excavated houses of this era. We also found bronze nails just inside the threshold, hinting at the wooden door that would have graced this entryway.

Beginning our excavation of a medieval Islamic house, surrounded by ruins of other medieval houses and post-Talayotic buildings.
Excavating the east wall of the kitchen. Note the white plaster to the right of the author (middle), and the partially-excavated patio in the background.
The kitchen looking east. Moving left to right you can see the plaster floor, inlaid grinding stone and hand-held grinder in situ, and the doorway (undergoing excavation) that led out to patio.

We recovered carbonized plant remains through flotation, a method of using water to separate carbonized plant remains and microartifacts from their surrounding soil matrix. I built a new flotation tank for the project, and trained team members in this method. I will begin analyzing the plant remains from this season during the academic year, and based on findings from the previous season, I expect to find barley (which is a hardy crop that grows well in hot rocky areas and requires a moderate amount of water) and pulses like lentils and chickpeas (which grow best in cooler temperatures and require moderate amounts of water). Based on the growing requirements of these crops, we can begin to hypothesize which types of habitats Menorcan farmers selected for their fields.

The kitchen looking north. The plaster floor is exposed in the eastern portion (R-hand side) beneath the compacted occupation debris and collapse (intact in the western portion, L-hand side).
Teaching MAP team members how to recover plant remains and microartifacts through flotation.
MAP team members sorting the heavy fraction to recover microartifacts like fish bones and small plaster fragments.
Artifacts recovered from flotation, including lots of wood charcoal (second bag from the left).

Some of the agricultural engineering of the medieval era is still functional today, like this irrigation canal in a barranco (valley) that waters orchards and fields, creating a direct line between ancient and modern land-use practices.

Barranco irrigation canal still in use today (photo taken 14 July 2022).

Flotation was one of the methods employed to understand the way in which the medieval inhabitants managed their surroundings, along with mapping and 3D modeling structures and open spaces linking them. Through this multidisciplinary research we will be able to reconstruct the rhythm of life of medieval Menorca, and the ways in which people cultivated and built their landscapes.

Check out more about our project on Instagram: @MAProject360

Kathleen Forste is an anthropological archaeologist who studies agricultural systems through the analysis of archaeological plant remains, historical sources, and environmental data. Her research focuses on how societies adapt their agricultural systems to various environmental and socioeconomic conditions during the Islamic period (7th through 13th centuries) in the Levant and Iberia. She earned her PhD in 2021 from Boston University, where she is currently a Lecturer of Archaeology.  

Want to help more students and early career archaeologists get into the field? Donate to the cause today by selecting “Student Support” as your gift purpose!

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