Narrowing the harvest: Increasing sickle investment and the rise of domesticated cereal agriculture in the Fertile Crescent (original) (raw)
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Agricultural Strategies at Dja’de el-Mughara, Northern Syria (10th - 9th millennium cal. BC)
C. Douché et F. Pichon dir, Routes de l’Orient, Actes I, From the Caucasus to the Arabian Peninsula: Domestic Spaces in the Neolithic,, 2018
In Southwest Asia, the numerous mutations that have taken place around 12000 cal BC resulted in the emergence of the first sedentary societies. Hunting and gathering were progressively replaced by plant cultivation and animal husbandry as a new form of subsistence. Those changes can be observed at Dja’de el-Mughara (Northern Syria), occupied for a long time from the 10th millennium (late PPNA) to the end of the 9th millennium cal. B.C (early PPNB). The site highlights the evolution of agricultural practices during this period, also characterised by many social and technological changes. This paper aims to present some preliminary results from both archaeobotanical study and functional analysis of harvesting tools. Due to the syrian conflict, most of the lithic pieces were inaccessible, thus the functional analysis was only carried on the material from the late phase (DJ3). This work provides an insight into the evolution of agricultural strategies at one of the earliest sedentary communities. The identified taxa allow us to discuss their probable use in daily life activities. The study of more than 400 archaeobotanical samples shows that there is no evidence for morphological domestication. However, the increase of frequencies of cereals and pulses with time, associated to that of arable weeds, let consider that inhabitants of Dja’de were cultivators and not only collectors or gatherers. The functional analysis of a hundred glossy blades from Dja’de allow to understand the way neolithic groups exploited the plant resources in their environment (especially cereal harvesting) during the process of plant domestication.
The complex origins of domesticated crops in the Fertile Crescent
Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 2009
A combination of genetics and archaeology is revealing the complexity of the relationships between crop plants and their wild ancestors. Archaeobotanical studies are showing that acquisition of the full set of traits observed in domesticated cereals was a protracted process, intermediate stages being seen at early farming sites throughout the Fertile Crescent. New genetic data are confirming the multiregional nature of cereal domestication, correcting a previous view that each crop was domesticated by a rapid, unique and geographically localised process. Here we review the evidence that has prompted this reevaluation of the origins of domesticated crops in the Fertile Crescent and highlight the impact that this new multiregional model is having on modern breeding programmes.
Early Holocene cultivation before domestication in northern Syria
Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, 2008
Charred plant remains from the sites of Tell Qaramel, Jerf el Ahmar, Dja’de and Tell ‘Abr situated in northern Syria and dated to the tenth and ninth millennia cal b.c. demonstrate that a wide variety of wild pulses, cereals, fruits and nuts was exploited. Five lines of evidence suggest that cultivation was practised at three of the sites. (1) Wild einkorn, wild rye and lentils occur outside their natural habitats. (2) The founder crops barley, emmer and single-grained einkorn appear at different times. (3) An assemblage of weeds of cultivation was identified. (4) There is a gradual decrease in gathered plants such as small seeded grasses and Polygonum/Rumex. (5) Barley grains increase in breadth and thickness. Morphological domestication did not become established, perhaps because seed stock was regularly collected from wild stands. Charred rodent droppings indicate large-scale grain storage.
The Origins of Agriculture in the Near East
2011
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Composite Sickles and Cereal Harvesting Methods at 23,000-Years-Old Ohalo II, Israel
Use-wear analysis of five glossed flint blades found at Ohalo II, a 23,000-years-old fisher-hunter-gatherers' camp on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, Northern Israel, provides the earliest evidence for the use of composite cereal harvesting tools. The wear traces indicate that tools were used for harvesting near-ripe semi-green wild cereals, shortly before grains are ripe and disperse naturally. The studied tools were not used intensively, and they reflect two harvesting modes: flint knives held by hand and inserts hafted in a handle. The finds shed new light on cereal harvesting techniques some 8,000 years before the Natufian and 12,000 years before the establishment of sedentary farming communities in the Near East. Furthermore , the new finds accord well with evidence for the earliest ever cereal cultivation at the site and the use of stone-made grinding implements.
Pragdhara, 2008
Although the Near East has long been a textbook example of pristine agricultural origins, archaeobotanical research in the last decade has transformed our understanding of the processes involved and provides some important guidance and warning for agricultural origins research generally. While older theories tended to assume that the beginnings of cereal exploitation developed as part of a broad spectrum revolution shortly (and inevitably) before the transition to farming, it is now clear that there was a very long prehistory of wild cereal use by seed and nut gathering foragers. The evidence from Ohalo II puts wild wheat and barley use at least 10,000 years before cultivation. Also of particular importance are new archaeobotanical approaches to identifying the initial cultivation through analyses of associated weeds, which indicates that cultivation began significantly, perhaps a millennium or even three, before recognizable morphologically domesticated cereals. What is also now becoming clear is that changes in cereal grain size may not be good indicators of domestication in terms of seed dispersal criteria (tough rachis) for all species. Seed size increase in pulses can also now be shown to not be closely linked to initial domestication. In general then, the quantitative increase in archaeobotanical data is showing the origins of crop cultivation to have been a dynamic and multi-stage evolutionary process and not a single simple "revolution' or "discovery.'
Agronomic conditions and crop evolution in ancient Near East agriculture
Nature communications, 2014
The appearance of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent propelled the development of Western civilization. The evolution of agronomic conditions in the Fertile Crescent was investigated by reconstructing cereal kernel weight and using stable carbon and nitrogen isotope signatures of kernels and charcoal from a set of 11 archaeological sites from Upper Mesopotamia, with chronologies spanning from the onset of agriculture to the turn of the era. Water availability for crops, inferred from carbon isotope discrimination (13C), was two- to fourfold higher in the past than at present, with a maximum between 10,000 and 8,000 cal BP. Nitrogen isotope composition (δ15N) decreased over time, which suggests cultivation occurring under gradually less fertile soil conditions. Domesticated cereals showed a progressive increase in kernel weight over several millennia following domestication. Our results provide a first comprehensive view of agricultural evolution in the Near East inferred directly from archaeobotanical remains.
Antiquity, 2012
At Jerf el Ahmar in northern Syria the authors have excavated a settlement where the occupants were harvesting and processing barley 1000 years in advance of its domestication. Rows of querns installed in square stone and daub buildings leave no doubt that this was a community dedicated to the systematic production of food from wild cereals. Given the plausible suggestion that barley was being cultivated, the site opens a window onto a long period of pre-domestic agriculture. Rye was also harvested, its chaff used to temper mud walls.
The region of the northern Fertile Crescent experienced dramatic changes in the political and cultural life of its societies during the mid-late Holocene period (approximately 3000-1000 calibrated years B.C.). The range of these changes in terms of agricultural production, as well as their interrelationship with climate, is poorly understood. We review and highlight the transformations of agricultural systems, and what might have triggered them, through an interdisciplinary approach based on archaeobotanical, geoarchaeological, and philological data from a series of archaeological sites in northern Mesopotamia. The archaebotanical record suggests changes in crop cultivation at the transition from the Early Bronze Age to the Middle Bronze Age (MBA). The general pattern of the MBA manifests itself also in the Late Bronze Age sites, whereas the Iron Age sites reveal changes such as the extension of free-threshing wheat occurrence and a return of flax. These changes have been set in comparison to fluctuations of the stable carbon isotope composition in seeds and to the dynamics of irrigation networks documented by pedosediment profiles in the field, as well as by textual sources. According to the evidence, a number of reasons can be considered responsible for societal change during the Bronze Age, such as changing climatic and environmental conditions, increasing societal, political, and economic complexity, population growth and related problems of sustainability and warfare, which were all interwoven through feedback mechanisms. Whether we call these developments "collapse" or "recommencement" remains a matter of opinion.