Abstracts Category : Other

Cloister, manor and botanic gardens in medieval and early modern Finland and Sweden - An archaeobotanical approach to garden history

by Teija Alanko

Archaeobotany combines botany, archaeology and history, and studies useful plants and interactions between humans and plants in the past, including horticulture. Garden history has been studied in Finland mainly through historical sources, but not much with archaeological or archaeobotanical methods, although the importance of multidisciplinary work has been noted, since written sources available are often not sufficient. Archaeobotany in Finland has revealed garden plant remains, but garden soils have not been investigated much. Archaeobotanical material, obtained from soil samples, i.e. macrosubfossil plant remains, is interpreted in archaeological and historical contexts. Excavations are, however, often restricted for practical reasons, determining also sites for macrofossil analyses. An alternative sampling method may be one solution to carry out macrofossil studies in sites unlikely to be excavated, such as historical gardens. The aims of this study were to elucidate a part of Finnish and Swedish garden history by means of archaeobotany, and to test archaeobotanical sampling in gardens in the absence of excavations with a sampler and applying AMS-radiocarbon dating. The research comprises four case studies and a review from five sites; Naantali Cloister, Kumpula Manor, and academic gardens in Uppsala, Turku and Helsinki. The sites are partly linked historically to each other, and they reach from the 15th century to the 21st century. Soil samples were collected at four sites with a sampler from different levels from narrow pits, one by one in vertical series. At one site, samples came from excavations. The samples were floated and sieved in a laboratory, and macrofossil remains were identified and counted. Altogether 8,404 macrofossil plant remains belonging to 154 plant taxa were obtained. In total 30 AMS-radiocarbon dates were measured from seeds, charred grains, and pieces of charred wood. The oldest dated seeds and grains were medieval, the youngest were modern. Macrofossil plant remains included cereals, berries, ornamental, medicinal and garden plants, and cultural or garden weeds, indicating both consumption and garden cultivation at the sites. Other soil contents, such as fish scales and chips of wood and charcoal, referred to fertilization and thus also gardening. The sampling method worked reasonably well. Sampling was independent of excavations, and relatively quick. Still, the maximum size of a sample was limited, although larger samples could have yielded more macrofossils and species. Written sources were necessary for the background, but in the cases of historical gardens, the literature gave historical contexts well enough. Garden history can and should be studied with both written sources and archaeobotanical methods. Informative macrofossil sampling can be carried out both from excavations and straight from garden soil. Plant lists, when existing, give information of cultivated species, but not of plants consumed or having grown as garden weeds at the sites. Still, quite few species that