Where is the kitchen waste? The multienvironmental study of the distribution of kitchen waste in castle Rokštejn, Czech Republic
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The waste is usually used to unwanted material that is permanently and intentionally thrown away with no further plans for its use. The kitchen waste should consist of the organic and organomineral residues from the food preparation and the food consumption. Are we able to track the kitchen waste inside the medieval castle? To find an answer for this question a long-term archaeological excavation was done in medieval castle Rokštejn, Czech Republic. The excavation areas taken place of the 80 % of the inner castle area and contained excavated space in the surrounding of the castle’s kitchens or bakery places. As the castle was constructed in many stages, there was possible to compare two different places linked to the food production in time and space and compare them with the other types of the waste or occupational surfaces. The methods of osteology, archaeobotany and micromorphology were applied to study archaeological material from castle Rokštejn. The dumping areas were not observed in spite of the fact, that the castle lasted for in minimum 270 years, and we can expect, that in minimum 15-20 people or the great margravial court lived there. A part of reuse kitchen waste was detected in small castle´s garden areas. The bones are always cut, chopped, and crushed into small pieces and usually the hardest parts of the animal body like teeth or horn appear in archaeological record. These sediments also often rich of charcoal. The micromorphology revealed accumulations of charcoal and eggshells, but these were related mainly to the floors. The rest of the kitchen waste was perhaps transported out of the castle, decayed in dump areas together with the animal excrements and later distributed as fertiliser to increase crop yields. |
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