Phytoliths are a durable floral microfossil formed by silica absorbed by a plant during its life. Although the usefulness of phytoliths in archaeology has been known for nearly a century, the field (independently) has not attained much popularity. Despite the fact that the yields of evidence and information from phytoliths are truly amazing, the field itself is at times more tedious than dendrochronology, causing a delay in the development of the use of phytoliths, as well as the lack of recognition. Phytoliths have been proven to be useful in a number of studies, ranging from paleo-environments, ancient agriculture, ancient technology, even the diet of particular cultures and their livestock. The largest problem with phytoliths tends to be the inability to identify certain phytoliths or the need to correlate the phytoliths with a different chronologies or reference collections. With all of the uses phytoliths have, these problems seem to be recurrent. However, in order to......
Join Now or Login to view the rest of this paper.
Approximate Word Count: 3352
Approximate Pages: 13 (260 words per double-spaced page) |