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dAf 93

RUAS Marie-Pierre

Productions agricoles, stockage et finage en Montagne Noire médiévale

Le grenier castral de Durfort (Tarn)

Carpological research combined with careful field methodology provides an exemplary illustration of the potential for an approach only recently applied to historical periods in France. The stocks from the Durfort granary, destroyed by fire in the 14 th century, have provided an opportunity to study almost 400,000 seeds from the same occupation layer. The corpus of 157 taxa, composed of 26 cultivated and 131 wild plants, has provided a large number of research opportunities. Carpological analysis, carried out in conjunction with archival research, has produced remarkable information in areas ranging from spatial distribution of grain species in the storage structure to hypotheses on farming practices on medieval community lands in a medium mountain context. The results demonstrate the importance of this contribution to our knowledge of agrarian history and material culture.

Abstract

Abstract

1 Durfort Mountain : the archaeological site and carpological approach

The archaeological site of Castlar in the Tarn region, located half way up the Berniquaut slope, at the north-west extremity of the Montagne Noire, comprises the remains of a castrum constructed at the end of the 12th century and deserted at the end of the 14th century. The site overlooks both the Sor Valley, where the present-day village of Durfort has developed, and the Revel Plain. Environmental study of this medium mountain area has brought to light strong topographical, bioclimatic, pedological and floristic contrasts. Far from providing evidence for an unchanging environment, analysis of contemporary plant formations by means of botanical transects has produced data which can be used to reconstruct the medieval community’s living environment. After a brief summary of the economic and social history of the region, the study turns to the archaeological characteristics of the site and of the granary, probably destroyed by fire in the first half of the 14th century. On-site methodology developed in order to obtain accurate carpological data is presented as a short manual. Objective sampling of the fire level was achieved by taking sediment systematically from each square metre. Water-sieving of the 35 samples (709 litres of sediment) thus collected, using 2 mm and 0,5 mm mesh, resulted in gathering most of the wild plant seeds as well as minute components from cereal spikes which provide invaluable information for paleoagronomic interpretation.

2 The plant corpus : preliminary results and observations

Quantitative and biometrical analyses, combined with study of the composition of the various types of remains and their distribution patterns, have allowed a detailed discussion of each taxon. A total of 392,563 remains provide evidence for 26 different cultivated and/or harvested plants and 131 wild plants. After verification of the degree to which samples are reliable and representative, the cultivated plants were classified from an anthropological perspective, based on an assessment of each identified species’ use. The burnt stock comprised primarily cereals, leguminous plants and grapes. The heaps of cereals have also provided more or less abundant quantities of chaff whose spatial distribution clarifies the nature of the deposits. Analysis of these finds allows a distinction to be made between stock remains and other remains from light meals, cleaning activities or previous crops. The extensive list of wild plants is organised and studied from both phytosociological and autoecological perspectives. Following discussion on the appropriateness of these two approaches in an archaeobotanical context, the presence of plant communities is demonstrated using these two methods. The plant communities’ ecological characteristics provide information on the crops’ environmental context as well as on the ecosystems used by the castrum community. The spatial distribution of wild species communities linked to cultivated plants in the burnt layer is studied with the same attention to detail as that of the cultivated species. Significant associations can be identified between certain weed assemblages and some cereal types making it possible to reconstruct farming practices and medieval communal land use half a century before the castrum was finally deserted.

3 Agricultural practices, crop cycles and the Durfort lands in the 14th century

Following on from the conclusion that wild plants from the site (and thus most of the stored harvests) originated locally, the author uses environmental information presented in chapter 1 and the ecological properties of the species attested at the site to plot the probable 14th century crop sites on a map of the landscape. The harvests thus give us a glimpse of an agro-pastoral structure which made use of diverse cereal types adapted to the varied conditions of the local environment. Elements of a coherent agro-system are revealed through the different combinations of suggested crop cycles which are organised both in terms of the landscape and sowing times to form a tiered polyculture, based on a cereal-meadow system. Crop rotations are organised around a winter cereal (rye, einkorn, breadwheat), a spring cereal (oats ?) and a long period during which the land either lies fallow, or remains as grassland or heath. A saltus used with pluriannual grazing and/or reaping meadows exists alongside an ager terraced between the plain and the hill-tops. This system appears to be correlated with sheep raising, a necessity for the small-scale production of woollen cloth which provided the community with its basic revenue. A number of different documents, including ethnographic, ecological, iconographic archaeobotanical and archaeozoological sources, are used to develop and support these hypotheses.

4 From the granary to the table : storage and diet

Cereals would appear to have been sorted and stored by species. Study of cereal processing and the carpological composition of assemblages attest to the quality of grain cleaning. The ways in which each species was stored are examined, including storage methods, packaging, partition walls and spatial organisation of stocks. The foodstuffs thus preserved reflect a diet based upon a wide selection of plants, which benefited from the varied resources of the medium mountain environment as well as from trade with Mediterranean regions. Wild flora mixed in with the preserved crop remains are discussed in terms of nutritional potential and as evidence for possible gathering practices which may have had social significance. The presence of certain species known for their toxic properties invites discussion of storage practices and possible sanitation problems. The identification of pastures leads on to a discussion of cattle feeding and what would appear to be high-quality grazing conditions available on these lands. Taken as a whole, the author’s conclusions provide the basis for a sociological profile of the lands’ owners.

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