An initial key of starch grains from edible plants of the Eastern Mediterranean for use in identifying archaeological starches

Among archaeological micro-remains, starches can be used as a tool for reconstructing past environments, diets, and trade patterns through the identification of the plants collected and consumed by ancient populations. Starch grains preserved in dental calculus and on stone tools have been recovered from archaeological material from sites around the world. However, the ability to identify archaeological starch grains relies on having a broad (i.e., many taxa) and deep (i.e., many individuals from the same taxon) reference collection from modern plants. Only a small handful of such reference collections have been published, and thus far none have been created for taxa from the Eastern Mediterranean. This region is rich in plants that have been used for their starch-rich seeds and roots since prehistory, and many of the wild taxa are the progenitors of domesticated species that were cultivated in the Neolithic and remain economically important today. To help document the history of human interactions with these plant taxa, we present here a reference collection based on the analysis of 220 individual plant parts (e.g., seeds, tubers) from 188 modern Levantine plant species (both wild and domestic), and three non-native plants that are frequently found as modern contamination. Of the examined plant samples, 110 from 106 taxa (species and subspecies) contained starches. We also provide a key based on this collection to aid in the identification of archaeological starch remains.