Agriculture and Environment at Servia
Wheats
The commonest wheat, as in most places in prehistoric Europe, was emmer ( Triticum dicoccum). Einkorn (T. monococcum) was rather less common. (Bread wheat (T. aestivum/durum) was not encountered at Servia.) The use of both wheats declines between the Late Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age: evidence from elsewhere indicates that it is likely to have been a gradual change. A notable feature is that, although both two-seeded and single-seeded forms of einkorn were cultivated, the two-seeded from was restricted to the Early Neolithic and the earliest part of the Middle Neolithic.
Both einkorn and emmer are glume wheats with brittle rhachises and tough
glumes and lemmas. As is usual with such wheats, they seem to have been stored
in the half-prepared state as roughly-cleaned disarticulated spikelets. Storage
was probably in skins or baskets, mainly in the roof spaces of the houses, from
which supplies were drawn as needed for more convenient storage prior to final
de-husking, winnowing, sieving, and milling.