A range of methods have been applied to identify whether phytoliths have been heated or fired: morphological alterations, changes in colour and opacity, refractive index and Raman spectroscopy. As not all phytoliths seem to be affected in the same way, these methods are obviously limited and none provide satisfactory results for sufficient discrimination between heated/burned and unheated/unburned phytoliths. We surveyed phytoliths in soil thin sections taken from a variety of modern and archaeological contexts in Northern Europe. Newly formed phytoliths are argued to exhibit no auto-fluorescence. Our observations of combustion features and heated material revealed that phytoliths commonly appear to become auto-fluorescent upon heating. This approach, thus, complements previously developed proxies for heating and burning of phytoliths.

已经应用了多种方法来鉴定是否加热了植物石料：形态变化，颜色和不透明度的变化，折射率和拉曼光谱。由于并非所有的植物石似乎都以相同的方式受到影响，因此这些方法显然受到限制，而且都无法提供令人满意的结果来充分区分加热/燃烧和未加热/未燃烧的植物石。我们调查了从北欧各种现代和考古环境中获取的土壤薄片中的植物石器。据认为，新形成的植物石没有自发荧光。我们对燃烧特征和受热物质的观察表明，植硅石通常会在加热时变成自发荧光。因此，该方法补充了先前开发的用于加热和燃烧植物石的代理。