Plants and People: Choices and Diversity through Time (original) (raw)
2014, Early Agricultural Remnants and Technical Heritage (EARTH): 8,000 Years of Resilience and Innovation
This first monograph in the EARTH: The Dynamics of Non-Industrial Agriculture: 8,000 years of Resilience and Innovation series, approaches the great variety of agricultural practices in human terms. It focuses on the relationship between plants and people, the complexity of agricultural processes and their organisation within particular communities and societies. Collaborative European research among archaeologists, archaeobotanists, ethnographers, historians and agronomists using a broad analytical scale of investigation seeks to establish new common ground for integrating different approaches. By means of interdisciplinary examples, this book showcases the relationship between people and plants across wide ranging and diverse spatial and temporal milieus, including crop diversity, the use of wild foodstuffs, social context, status and choices of food plants.
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Food, economy and society: Multi-faceted lessons to learn from ancient plant remains
Plant remains and animal bones from archaeological excavations form the basis for interpretation in ancient food studies. This paper presents the methods and theory of archaeobotany, followed by a discussion of the Danish archaeobotanical record. The often very well-preserved archaeobotanical assemblages, of which some examples are presented below, hold great potential for providing new insights on ancient agriculture and food practices.
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