Archaeologists Find Frozen Bronze Age Wooden Container with Cereal Remains in Swiss Alps

Archaeologists have found a well-preserved Early Bronze Age wooden vessel in the Swiss Alps. The artifact could help researchers shed new light on the spread and exploitation of cereal grains.

The Early Bronze Age wooden container, Lötschenpass, Switzerland. Image credit: Rolf Wenger, Marcel Cornelissen  Badri Redha / Archaeological Service of the Canton of Bern.

The Early Bronze Age wooden container, Lötschenpass, Switzerland. Image credit: Rolf Wenger, Marcel Cornelissen Badri Redha / Archaeological Service of the Canton of Bern.

The Early Bronze Age wooden container was found in an ice patch at 8,700 feet (2,650 m) on the summit of the Lötschenpass in Switzerland.

“The Alpine ice patch in which the artifact was found provides optimum conditions for biomolecular preservation,” the archaeologists explained.

“The wooden vessel contained an amorphous residue on its central surface.”

“A mixture of spelt (Triticum spelta), emmer (Triticum dicoccon) and barley (Hordeum vulgare) could be microscopically observed embedded within the residue, evidenced by numerous fragments of wheat (Triticum sp.) testae, wheat pericarp, poorly-preserved spelt and emmer glumes, glume base (Triticum spelta and Triticum dicoccon), and one segment of barley rachis (Hordeum vulgare),” they said.

In order to identify lipid components in the preserved residue, the scientists applied gas chromatography mass spectrometry, a technique routinely applied to ceramic artifacts.

“We were expecting to find a milk residue left behind in the container — perhaps from a porridge-type meal wolfed down by a hunter or herder making their way through a snowy Alpine pass,” they said.

“But instead we discovered lipid-based biomarkers for whole wheat or rye grain, called alkylresorcinols.”

“We didn’t find any evidence of milk, but we found these phenolic lipids, which have never been reported before in an archaeological artifact, but are abundant in the bran of wheat and rye cereals and considered biomarkers of wholegrain intake in nutritional studies,” said lead author Dr. André Colonese, from the Department of Archaeology at the University of York.

“This is an extraordinary discovery if you consider that of all domesticated plants, wheat is the most widely grown crop in the world and the most important food grain source for humans, lying at the core of many contemporary culinary traditions.”

The Lötschenpass connects the Western Swiss Plateau to the Valais valley, which in turn connects with the Italian Peninsula.

“A number of lake shore pile dwellings existed on the Swiss Plateau during the Early Bronze Age, while in the Valais the settlement record is thinner but the large number of Early Bronze graves show that the valley was not only settled but people imported goods from north and south of the Alps,” the scientists said.

“In this context, the wooden container found on the Lötschenpass can be linked with either trading connections or seasonal movements from lowland areas to upland pastures as part of the pastoral economy, although hunting could also explain the requirement to access such rocky and glaciated areas of the high Alps.”

Over the last three decades, thousands of ceramic artifacts from Europe have been analyzed for their molecular content, most revealing evidence of milk and meat products, but hardly any evidence of cereals.

“Detecting a molecular marker for cereals also has widespread implications for studying early farming,” said co-author Dr. Jessica Hendy, from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

“It enables us to piece together when and where this important food crop spread through Europe.”

“This evidence sheds new light on life in prehistoric alpine communities, and on their relationship with the extreme high altitudes,” said co-author Dr. Francesco Carrer, from Newcastle University.

“People traveling across the alpine passes were carrying food for their journey, like current hikers do.”

“This new research contributed to understanding which food they considered the most suitable for their trips across the Alps.”

The findings appear today in the journal Scientific Reports.

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Andre Carlo Colonese et al. 2017. New criteria for the molecular identification of cereal grains associated with archaeological artefacts. Scientific Reports 7, article number: 6633; doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-06390-x

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