Know-how in flax production - Specialised farmers of the Late Neolithic period (4300-2200 B.C.) in the circum-alpine region. An interdisciplinary study on the spread and use of the cultivated plant flax (Linum usitatissimum L.)

• Applicant: Dr. Sabine Karg
• Subject Area: Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: from 2016 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 289510075

This application has the goal to complete the publications of numerous results. Additional aspects on the cultural history of the useful plant flax will be investigated on a newly discovered archaeological finding by applying interdisciplinary methods. Thereby the project will be completed in a satisfying way.Two sets of spindle whorls from excavations at Lake Constance and in Upper Swabia were compared with a huge dataset from South-eastern Europe. The newly adopted know-how of plant fibre production goes along with the introduction of fibre flax and can be explained by the immigration of new people from South-eastern Europe. The hypothesis that a new breed of fibre flax was introduced to the Alpine region during the 4th millennium BC associated with technical innovation could be proven by measurements of flax seeds from 50 archaeological sites and 192 features. New is the fact that at two sites fibre flax already appeared from the start of the 4th millennium BC.From ten wetland sites measurements from charred and uncharred flax seeds were taken from the same layer. A charring ratio (quotient) was calculated that will enable to relate charred flax seeds from entire Europe and the Near East to either the fibre or the oil variety. This result will be published together with a description and documentation of the morphological features of both varieties. Controlled experiments of cultivating old land races of flax are performed since the beginning of the project. The harvest delivers sufficient material for comparison that can now be used for the reconstruction of the Neolithic subsistence strategy. The measured thousand-seed weight will help to calculate the plant density and thereby the crop yield of the Neolithic cultivated area. This dataset should be published during the final phase of this project.During the first project phase a Neolithic stock of flax plants was missing. But in 2018 such a stock was discovered in a wetland site at Lake Zürich and sampled as a whole block by the Cultural heritage Agency of the Canton Zürich. The archaeobotanical analyses were offered to me. The block will be analysed by applying conventional and new analytical methods: botanical macro remains, phytoliths, and ancient DNA. The goal is to reconstruct the original height and the branching factor and weed contamination in order to reconstruct the growing conditions of the Neolithic flax. The project will definitely benefit from these new results.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants