Plant material associated with Ötzi’s remains and equipment has been another productive area of research, yielding information about the specific ecological environment he inhabited and the specific plant resources his community used.

The analysis of plant materials — seeds, pollen, leaves, plant fibers — recovered from and near the mummy has been conducted by paleoethnobotanists with tools that allow the identification of species even from small and degraded fragments.

Ötzi’s last meal included, as noted, emmer wheat — one of the earliest cultivated grain species, the ancestor of many modern wheat varieties.

The presence of emmer confirms that he was part of an agricultural community: emmer does not grow wild in the Alps but is a cultivated crop that would have been grown in the valleys below the high alpine terrain where he was found.

The charcoal and embers found in his birch-bark container for carrying fire were analyzed and identified as coming from viburnum — a common European shrub — consistent with the use of locally available wood for fire-carrying.