, ed. Marian Berihuete-Azorín et al. Advances in Archaeobotany, 6. Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing, 2021, 183 pp.

Forests provided a range of essential resources for medieval people: Timber for construction most obviously, but also fuel (including charcoal, so useful for producing pottery and metalware), forage for livestock, and a place to hunt game and gather wild plants (both for food and dyes). But in addition to these better-known resources, forests also provided other raw materials out of which people could make a variety of products, such as baskets, wicker, and wattle. Because these plant materials rot so easily, archeologists rarely recover them, and so they remain invisible in our understanding of the past.