Milling wheat and barley with rotary querns: the Ouarten women (Dahmani, Kef, Tunisia).
Full details
Authors & editors | |
Publisher | AmS-Skrifter, Stavager |
Year of publication | 2014 24, pp 11–30 |
Languages | English (main text) |
Medium | Digital |
Edition | 1 |
Topics | Economics & commerce > Feeding the World |
Tags | |
Scope & content | Women of the Ouarten Berber tribe (Kef, western Tunisia) still manually perform many of the domestic tasks related to the preparation of cereals for consumption: cleaning, roasting and milling with rotary querns. These tasks have been studied from an ethnoarchaeological perspective within the framework of the research project “Ouarten: ethnoarchéologie d’une tribe berbère en Tunisie (Kef)”. The manual cleaning and grinding of bread and durum wheat, the cleaning, roasting and milling of hulled barley, as well as the cooking of the different cereals, have been recorded. This study presents the different steps of each process, the present-day tools and technical skills, as well as the different products, by-products and residues resulting from each stage of the operation. Keywords: milling system, rotary quern, ethnoarchaeology, archaeobotany, Tunisia |