Anadolu'nun Önemli Yağ Bitkilerinden Keten/Linum ve Izgın/Eruca Orta Anadolu'da Beziryağı Üretimi ve Bezirhaneler
Abstract
Flax/Ldnum and Eruca are among the oil plants such as olive, sesame, cotton, popy, sunflower, hazel, Cephalaria, safflower, and hackberry were important in the Anatolian culinary culture. Although, linseed oil is usually associated with its industrial uses, in Central Anatolia it was produced for cooking, lamp oil, fodder, and to oil wooden wheeled carts, as well as water-buffaloes. Linum and Eruca seeds were both used to produce 'linseed oil' Beziryağı , however, oil produced from flax as much preferred for cooking. Both linseed oil and flax seeds were widely used in folk medicine. The production of linseed oil may have started thousands years ago in Central Anatolia. Both plants are natives to Anatolia, and flax seeds have been found in several Neolithic sites. The earliest historical documents concerning linseed oil mills Bezirhane are Ottoman tax records, from 1500-1501. Until the 1970s there were still several oil-mills in the Aksaray area, producing linseed oil during winter. The pulp was used as fodder for draft animals. With the modernization of the agriculture in Anatolia, the increased availability of electricity to the villages, as well as the development of the road system and transportation, linseed oil lost its importance, and these oil mills were abandoned. The cultivation and the harvesting of oil plants, and the production of oil is important to archaeology because the identification of oil bearing plants, oil lamps, and the interpretation of various uses of grinding stones are all still at the early stages. The information gathered from ethnographic observation must be tested against archaeological findings. As in this case, although production stopped 20-25 years ago, sufficient information could, none the less, be gathered from informants who were still available and had worked in the mills, which combined with direct observation, made reconstruction possible.
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References
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