April 2022
While we tend to think of livestock mainly as a source of meat and milk, in practice they produce more dung than anything else. B. Sillar (2000:46).
As a quick-and-dirty reference to modern dairy cows, "The average dairy cow produces about 55 kg (120 pounds) of manure per day, and approximately 20 metric tons per year"; even if you cut that number in half, that's a lot of potential fuel from the family cow! ["HP Labs Designs Data Center Fueled by Manure," May 19, 2010] [Cow dung 'volatile solids' are about 60% of wet weight (Makki and Eljack 2003 ), so even "unimproved" varieties of cattle probably produce a lot dung.]
Check out this article that analyzes the influence of networks and communities of practice on the acceptance of new ideas: case study of dung fuel!
Khazraee, E. and S. Gasson
2015 Epistemic objects and embeddedness: Knowledge construction and narratives in
research networks of practice. The
Information Society: An International Journal 31 (2): 139-159.
For other dung news,
And now you can see the movie, "Yak Dung"! Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfpTHOhExGI. "With temperatures falling as low as -40°C on the plateau, yak dung is a valuable source of warmth for herdsmen. A non-polluting fuel, it is used to burn offerings to the gods and light oil lamps. Dung can be used to build houses and walls. It is the natural fertilizer of the grasslands, and it can be used as medicine and for washing clothes. Children can even make toys out of it, while artists sometimes sculpt figurines of the Buddha out of the material. The quality of the dung is an indicator of the environmental health of the plateau and the yaks that roam it. In short, for those of us who live on the plateau, dung is something we cannot live without. But the day we will have to live without it is getting nearer and nearer, and that day we will no longer be ourselves. Filmmaker Lanzhe is a Tibetan herdsman from Qinghai Province. This is his first documentary."
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer, December 24, 2010
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer, October 30, 2016
Keyword organization:
Country; Site; Archaeological relevance: e.g., fuel/fertilizer/feature;
Focus if not archaeological; Animal
and thanks to Örni Akeret (OA) for providing a bunch of references
July 2023
Jakobitsch, Thorsten, Cyril Dworsky, Andreas G. Heiss, Marlu Kühn, Sabine
Rosner, and Jutta Leskovar
2023 How animal dung can help to reconstruct past forest use: A late Neolithic case study
from the Mooswinkel pile dwelling (Austria).
Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 15(20).
Austria/macro/Mooswinkel pile dwelling
Valamoti, Soultana
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Huyge, Mark Van Strydonck, Dimitri Vandenberghe, and Veerle Linseele Berna, Francesco Birk, Jago Jonathan, Wenceslau Geraldes Teixeira, Eduardo Góes Neves,
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2013 Fossil beetles as possible evidence for transhumance during the middle and late
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2020 The Taphonomy of Plant and Livestock Dung Microfossils: An Ethnoarchaeological and
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2019 Animal penning and open area activity at Neolithic Çatalhöyük,
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2013 Early Neolithic household behavior at Tell Seker al-Aheimar (Upper Khabur, Syria):
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2010 Signs from a green desert: a preliminary examination of the archaeobotanical
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Reddy, Seetha N.
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2015 Geoarchaeological investigation in a domestic Iron Age quarter, Tel Megiddo, Israel.
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2003 High resolution stratigraphic distribution of coprolites withinneolithic middens,
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1955 Pollenanalytische Untersuchungen zu einigen schweizerischen Pfahlbauproblemen.
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2012 Zibl and
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sheep
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1986 Le bois de vache: This chip's for you. Saskatchewan Archaeology 7: 25-28.
fuel/bison
Wright, Milt
1992 Le bois de vache II: This chip's for you too. In Alberta: Studies in the
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2018 Millet manuring as a driving force for the Late Neolithic agricultural expansion of
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2004 Ethnoarchaeology in the Moroccan Jebala (Western Rif): Woodand dung as fuel.
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Butler, and S. Kahlheber, pp.163-175. Heinrich-Barth Institut, Köaut;ln.
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1999 Why was cattle-stalling introduced in prehistory? The significance of byre and
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[Download PDF]
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Zimmermann, W. H.
1999 Favourable conditions for cattle farming, one reason for the Anglo-Saxon migration
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[
Download PDF]
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Zimmermann, W. H.
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[Download PDF]
N. Europe/fertilizer
Zimmermann, W. Haio
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N.Europe/pig sties/cattle byres/phosphate/ethno
An edited exchange from the Archaeobotany List (Archaeobotany@ucl.ac.uk)
On Mon, 14 Apr 1997, Naomi Miller wrote:
Does anyone know how hot a dung-fueled fire burns? Or have a reference? Several people
have asked me this question in just the past month! Clearly a hot topic.
From: GuildD@aol.com
It burns a lot cooler than a wood fire, with
a steady low flame. In India, it is used as fuel for cooking. Whomever does the cooking
"puts the pot on to boil" in the morning and leaves for the daily work. Upon returning for
lunch the meal is done. In addition, it's free. See Marvin Harris, "Cows, Pigs, Wars and
Witches"
From: kealhofer lisa k
Rice's citations and discussions of open pit firing commonly include grass, wood, and
dung. The temperatures range from 550 C to 900 C. Temperatures in enclosed spaces, such
as kilns, ovens, or even hearths may be at the upper end of this range and higher. [Rice
1987:156, 164,165]
From: Alwynne Beaudoin
Milt Wright (1986) Le Bois De Vache: This Chip's For You. Saskatchewan Archaeology 7:
25-28.
Milt Wright (1992) Le Bois De Vache II: This Chip's For You Too. In Alberta: Studies in
the Arts and Sciences, edited by John Foster and Dick Harrison. Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 225-244.
The University of Alberta Press.
Milt, who was formerly a colleague of mine here at the Provincial Museum, carried out a
number of experiments with burning bison dung, and comparing the temperatures with fires
from wood (poplar and spruce). He was concerned to investigate the effectiveness of dung
fires. Although serious science, the papers are also well worth reading for Milt's sense
of humour and writing style.
From: Delwen Samuel
Regarding temperatures of dung-fuelled fires,
my experiment in Egypt with local village-made dung cake fuel (using palm fronds for
initial tinder) produced a maximum of 640 degrees C in 12 minutes, falling to 240 degrees
C after 25 minutes and 100 degrees C after 46 minutes. These temperatures were obtained
without refuelling and without bellows etc. I'm not sure what the dung consisted of
exactly but was probably a mixture of water buffalo, cow, and perhaps donkey dung. The
full time/temperature records are published on p. 276 in:
D. Samuel (1989) Their staff of life: Initial investigations on ancient Egyptian bread baking In:
B. J. Kemp, ed. Amarna Reports V, London: Egypt Exploration Society, pp 253-290.
From: M. Madella
From our ethnographical observation in Pakistan, cow/buffalo dung is also used to fire pottery.
The kilns are prepared with layers of dung + whatever organic thing that can burn
(paper/straw/dead branches...) and pottery. Then are sealed with soil, leaving some holes for the
fumes and to control the burning. In general dung is the principal source of fuel.
Of course it is the major source of fire for house cooking. In the desertic areas dung from
camel is also used.
The Baloochi tribes that live in the Thar during the winter use sheep/goat dung to make
fires with a lot of smoke outside their huts - this keeps under control the mosquitos!
At the moment I am working on the phytolith content of such fires in comparison with
the fireplaces for cooking (where a mixture of camel/cow dung and wood is used) and,
although the results are very very preliminary, it seems to be possible to discriminate
between the two different fires on the base of phytolith assemblages.
From: Ruth Shahack-Gross, e-mail Sept. 21, 2006
I conducted an experimental firing of dung in an open fire. Cattle dung reached a maximum
of 630 degrees Celsius and sheep dung a maximum of 570C. The pellets, especially those
from the sheep, continue to smolder for quite a long time and essentially have the same
characteristics as those of live embers. It is quite a good fuel material. This experiment
was done as part of my work published in the Tel Dor article (Shahack-Gross et al. 2005)
Dung and Kazakh Cooking (back to top of
page)
Julia McLean writes (email, April 20, 2015):
Another friend from northwest Xinjiang, Khaulan, tells me that corn was the base of his
parents' diets, growing up in the 1960s/70s in Tacheng, a small city just 15 kilometers
from the Kazakh border. The father spent his first ten years in a yurt, until his family
was forcibly relocated to the town. Apparently-oh and I just loved hearing about this, I
thought of you-one of the biggest emotional losses for his father's family, and really for
all of the families in his town who shifted to urban living, was the change in taste when
they stopped cooking with dung fuel. In the beginning, they all bought dung from rural
neighbors, but as time has gone on and the population has become increasingly urbanized,
dung fuel is nearly impossible to come by. Even when they can buy it, the question becomes
where to store it? Nobody wants a bunch of dung in their tiny apartment. One of the
biggest changes to "being Kazakh," he thinks, happened when families switched to wood
fires, and then to gas or electric. Not only did they lose the characteristic flavor, but
the style of cooking itself changed to adapt to higher temperatures and faster cooking
times.
Khaulan wasn't the only one to emphasize the importance of dung fuel to "real Kazakh cooking." Talking about food with the old man from Qyzylorda, a girl my age from Taraz, and a boy my age from a teensy village near the Kyrgyz border, all three came back to the very special taste imparted by dung fuel. The best dung comes from a hay called "chi" [a Stipa sp./Achnatherum splendens]. Bread, in particular, they told me, benefits from the slow, even heat of a dung fire, producing a tenderer crumb than that from a wood-burning oven. Elmira, the girl from Taraz, emphasized that dung-fired bread lasts much longer than wood-fired bread. Taba nan, as it is called, is cooked between two pans directly in the fire. The bread takes longer to bake, but will not go stale for over a week. "A week, two weeks, and it is still tender!" Uzbek and Uighur bread, by contrast, is "impatient bread" meant to be eaten the day it is baked. Elmira calls this a difference between city bread and nomad bread. When I asked friends from northern Kazakhstan about taba nan, however, I got blank stares. "Only southern Kazakhs eat a lot of bread," they said. "We eat meat. And now potatoes."
Dung and World War II (back to top of
page)
The Secrets of War, copyright 1998 Documedia group.
An interview with D. Fisher; here is an excerpt:
DF: ...They found uh, some forms of pigment, they found all kinds of...what they didn't find, what they couldn't find was something that would give the paint the right color. Uh, so eventually what they did was took camel dung, of which there was an abundance in the desert, and they mixed it into the paint and they created this camouflage paint that eventually for almost a year was the only thing that they used in the desert. And it created the right, obviously created the right color.
Q: So did they make a run on camel dung?
DF: So once they used camel dung, what happened was camel dung actually had a lot of uses in the desert, it was used to heat stoves, to bake bread, to do all kinds of things. Uh, so Maskelyn, because they needed massive amounts, sent out all his people with burlap bags, and they would walk along camels, and they would pick it up and uh,obviously among the Egyptians they would look and they would say, "Who are these strange British people who are fighting us for the camel dung?"
Q: (unintelligible)
DF: The other thing with camel dung that was....(long pause)
Q: The other thing....
DF: One of the, Maskelyn really got involved, to prove his worth Maskelyn got involved
in a lot of different projects very quickly after he arrived in the desert. One of them
was that the British were trying to make uh, different sort of lines uh, trying to make
different sort of mines to blow up the Germans tanks, and at one point Maskelyn created,
or helped create small explosives that looked like camel dung because it was known that
Germans tank drivers, it was good luck to drive your tank over camel dung. So Maskelyn
made these small mines that looked like camel dung,and the Germans would drive their tanks
over it, they would blow up, they would blow up the track, put the tank out of action, and
it became known that Maskelyn, that they were doing this, and there was an order that went
out to the German tank drivers not to drive over camel dung. So then what Maskelyn started
doing is he started making these things that looked like camel dung that a tank had
already driven over, it had tracks in it, so when the tank drivers saw these things that
had already been driven over, they knew they were safe, they drove over them, and again
the tracks exploded.
[NFM: Amazing what you find when you do a search for "camel dung"!]
And why did the Germans think camel dung was lucky? Maybe the answer is to be found at the microbial level; (relevant part in English).
Dung and the CIA
When the CIA's secret gadget-makers invented a listening device for the Asian jungles, they disguised it so the enemy would not be tempted to pick it up and examine it: The device looked like tiger droppings.The guise worked. Who would touch such a thing? The fist-size, brown transmitter detected troop movements along the trails during fighting in Vietnam, a quiet success for a little-known group of researchers at the intelligence agency.--Tim Bridis, Philadelphia Inquirer (January 4, 2004)
To see an attractive photograph (from Turkey) of this useful substance, click here, or link to some from ancient Syria!
Dung in the News [some links may not work anymore]
Camels' Manure. From Waste to a Worthwhile Farming Agent (from the camel4all.blog; Traditional Animal Genetic Resources for Food Security Under Climate Change Influence, 2016)
The author, Dr. Raziq (an animal agriculture PhD) comments that a 600 kg dairy(!) camel produces 15-17 kg dry manure daily. He suggests it could help compost date palm waste, making both more valuable. He also suggests a few possible uses for camel dung: 1) Farmyard manure/fertilizer, 2) Material to combat desertification and dune-fixing, 3) Bio-paper, 4) Bio-gas, 5) Power generation. He also cites: Hoffmann, I. & Mohammed, I. 2004. The role of nomadic camels for manuring farmer's fields in the Sokoto close-settled zone, Northwest Nigeria. Nomadic Peoples 8(1): 1-14.
National Poo Museum opens doors on Isle of Wight (www.bbc.com, April 4, 2016)
Llama Dung May Be Used to Clean Bolivia Water Supply (National Geographic Society, April 18, 2003)
In Bolivia, water seeping from abandoned mines in the Andes is polluting the main water supply of La Paz, the capital city. But a team of researchers is developing a low-cost way to neutralize the acidic, metal-laden water through a highly unusual filter: llama droppings.
In a pilot study, the scientists used llama dung to treat run-off from a tin and silver mine that has killed organisms in an alpine lake and continues to pollute the La Paz water supply.
Farm Uses Camel Dung for Environmental Clean-up. (Gulf News, Dubai, May 16, 2002)
In order to minimise the environmental impact of its oil-field operations, BP Sharjah has been using camel dung and grass clippings to clean up soil contaminated by oil or chemical spillage.
In a novel environmental exercise, BP Sharjah Oil Company has established an on site 'bioremediation' farm, the company's regional Outlook magazine has reported. Situated within the Sajaa Plant operational area, the farm treats any soil contaminated by accidental oil or chemical spillage.
"The treatment uses the natural bacteria found in the dung of locally grazing camels to degrade the hydrocarbon content of the soil, eventually leaving it non-hazardous," said a company statement.
Guts,
Germination, and Seeds
Andrew M. Sugden
Many plant species take advantage of the mobility of animals for the dispersal of
pollen and seeds. A common form of seed dispersal is endozoochory, whereby animals ingest
seeds and fruits and then pass the seeds in their feces; the seeds of some plants actually
require passage through an animal gut in order to germinate. Pakeman et al. quantify this
phenomenon in an ecological context by recording seed dispersal by rabbits and sheep in a
variety of grazed habitats in Scotland, and by germinating seed from dung collected during
the summer months. The seeds of almost 40% of the plant species recorded in these habitats
were able to germinate successfully after passing through rabbits or sheep--a
substantially higher proportion than previously thought. Regardless of habitat type,
species with smaller seeds and those capable of persisting in a soil seedbank tended to
predominate. -- AMS
Funct. Ecol. 16, 296 (2002)