Aspects of Archaeobotanical Methodology Applied to the Sediments of Archaeological Wetland Deposits

The understanding for taphonomy and archaeological layer formation in lakeshore settlements is still incomplete. In this work, it was attempted to change this situation on the basis of two lakeshore settlements, Zug-Riedmatt and Zurich-Parkhaus Opera. On the one hand, basic methodological research was done in order to standardise archaeobotanical methods like the wash-over sieving, subsampling, volume measurement and the representativeness based on sample volume. In this context, an educational film explaining all the important steps during the preparation of an archaeological sample for analysis was done. On the other hand, new methods for analysis were used for the evaluation of the two sites, allowing a disentanglement of different taphnonomic events. In the future, these methods can be used systematically for evaluations of lakeshore settlements. Only through the use of standardised methods for the preparation and analysis of archaeobotanical samples, a scientifically sound data set can be created, which will allow advanced interpretations of archaeological features from lakeshore settlements.