Free Republic

Someone's lunch was full of whole grains.Up in the high passes of the Bernese Alps, a team of researchers found a box. It was about 8 inches in diameter and made of pine, willow, and larch. It was 4,000 years old.Now, the scientists report in a new paper, published in Scientific Reports, they have discovered traces of what was once held in the box -- someone's lunch (or dinner or breakfast).The team thought that the box might have held porridge and looked for traces of milk. But they found nothing. Instead, using a newly developed technique, they were able to...

The remains of a Roman malting oven and charred spelt grains were found during digging in Bedfordshire, as part of the proposed work on the A428 between the Black Cat roundabout and Caxton Gibbet.Experts have analysed the grains and said they suggested people who lived there were involved in making beer...During the dig, the team from the Museum of London Archaeology (Mola) and the Cambridge Archaeological Unit discovered the remains of a farmstead that they believed was in use from the Middle Iron Age to the late Roman period.The Iron Age in Britain ran from about 800BC until the period...