The use of Cornus sanguinea L. (dogwood) fruits in the Late Neolithic
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
The use of Cornus sanguinea L. (dogwood) fruits in the Late Neolithic Tjaša Tolar1 · Irena Vovk2 · Urška Jug2 Received: 14 May 2019 / Accepted: 20 May 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Numerous fragments of Cornus sanguinea (dogwood) fruit stones were found in the cultural layer of the Late Neolithic pile dwelling site Strojanova voda at Ljubljansko barje, Slovenia, which indicate the Late Neolithic use of dogwood fruits. While these fruits are considered to be inedible, the research question about their use arose. Ethnobotanical and archaeobotanical sources were examined and experimental work on processing and using fresh C. sanguinea fruits was done, followed by chemical analyses of modern fruits (endocarps, mesocarps and exocarps) and archaeological fruit stones from the site. All these various approaches together suggest some possible uses. Fresh dogwood fruits can be crushed to give a soapy, creamy and oily emulsion with an exfoliant effect on the skin, which proved to be applicable, besides for oil, for cleaning and washing bodies, clothes and/or dishes. It can be concluded that Late Neolithic pile dwellers had a great knowledge of wild plants and their properties, and not only for food, and that the use of C. sanguinea fruits, at least south of the Alps, has been undervalued until now. Keywords Dogwood fruits · Experimental work · Chemical analyses · Late Neolithic pile dwelling · Slovenia
Introduction Many studies of the role of plants in the diet of Neolithic people in central Europe, based on the representation of uncharred plant macro-remains from waterlogged sites, have concluded that wild fruits were a significant part of the human diet (Hosch and Jacomet 2004; Tolar et al. 2011; Antolín and Jacomet 2015; Martin 2015). But were all wild plants used only for food? What could be their other, nonnutritional uses and how to establish and prove such uses? These research questions arose when thousands of fragments of supposedly inedible and hard fruit endocarps, fruitstones Communicated by S. M. Valamoti. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-020-00788-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Tjaša Tolar tjasa.tolar@zrc‑sazu.si 1
Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU), Institute of Archaeology, Novi trg 2, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
Department of Food Chemistry, National Institute of Chemistry, Hajdrihova 19, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
2
of Cornus sanguinea (dogwood) were found at the Strojanova voda site (Tolar 2018). This plant is not generally used as a food, but based on ethnographic evidence, the fruits can be cooked in combination with other wild fruits and used as for example in jams, spicy pastes and juice or as a sort of bitter drink like herbal gin (Machatschek 1998). Archaeobotanical finds of fruitstones of both Cornus species, C. sanguinea and C. mas (cornelian cherry), are not normally numer
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