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Late bronze age grain crops and Linear B ideograms *65, *120, and *1211

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

Paul Halstead
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield

Abstract

For late bronze age Greece, archaeobotanical research has demonstrated a striking range of grain crops, whereas only two or three categories of grain are recorded in Linear B texts. It is unlikely that each Linear B grain ideogram covers several crops, or that the paucity of grain ideograms results from the partial preservation of texts. It is argued that the Linear B evidence reflects selective palatial involvement in grain production, although the identity of the two or three crops documented in Linear B is uncertain.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1995

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References

2 Charred grains of bread and macaroni wheat are not easily separable.

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13 At Assiros: G. Jones, pers. comm.

14 Mrs Kelly Carey of A. Poortman (London), Ltd, kindly supplied asample of broomcorn millet in the hull; the figure for fully cleaned broomcorn millet grain is 81 kg/100 litres.

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32 Halstead, P., ‘The Mycenaean palatial economy: making the most of the gaps in the evidence’, PCPS 38 (1992), 5786.Google Scholar A similar discrepancy between a diversified archaeobotanical record and a highly specialized documentary record is evident in 3rd-millennium BC Mesopotamia and may be interpretable in similar terms: id., ‘Quantifying Sumerian agriculture: some seeds of doubt and hope’, Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture, 5 (1990), 187–95.