Supplementary Image Collection for "Phytolith Presence in Chenopodium album: the potentials for studying bathua in archaeological studies." Bates et al.

Abstract

Supplementary image collection for paper. Paper abstract: Chenopodium album is a globally ubiquitous plant that is at once a weed, food and fodder, placing it as an important taxa for many archaeological and paleoenvironmental studies. While the prolific seeds it produces survive well in most archaeological contexts, the vegetative tissues do not, and these tissues could provide critical missing information about the latter two roles it may have played in the past – food and fodder. Microbotanical remains, specifically phytoliths, might be able to provide evidence for this, but C.album is reported to produce few to no silica phytoliths. This paper proposes instead that looking to calcium oxalate phytoliths may be of use in archaeological studies, and reviews the C.album phytolith literature relating to this, as well as outlining modern plant studies to see what calcium oxalate phytoliths, and silica phytoliths, it produces. The results suggest that C.album is a prolific calcium oxalate phytolith producer, and combined with macrobotanical presence of this taxa at sites may be useful for thinking about vegetative tissue use in controlled contextual settings.