Early Holocene cultivation before domestication in northern Syria (original) (raw)
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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.
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.
Environmental Archaeology, 2010
The episodic periods of climate change between the end of the Pleistocene and the Early Holocene had significant effects on vegetation in the Levant. The three Late Epipalaeolithic phases at Tell Abu Hureyra (c. 13?1 kya cal. BP to 12?0 kya cal. BP) span the onset of the Younger Dryas when there was a reversion to cold and dry conditions from the preceding warmer/wetter Bølling-Allerød interstadial. The deterioration of the climate is argued to have caused a recession of Mediterranean woodland from the immediate environs of the site and thus the habitats of many of the edible large-seeded annual plants became less accessible. Changes in the taxonomic composition of the archaeobotanical samples from the three Late Epipalaeolithic phases were interpreted by the original analyst as reflecting diet change in response to a reduction in resource availability, with the inception of cultivation of wild cereals and large-seeded legumes to maintain yields of these high-ranked species. In this reassessment of the data we propose an alternative model and demonstrate that the changes in plant exploitation strategies at Abu Hureyra, which coincide with the onset of the Younger Dryas, can be more parsimoniously interpreted as representing a broadening of the plant diet to compensate for a loss in availability of higherranked species.
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.'
Acta Palaeobotanica 53(2), 2013
Archaeological fieldwork carried out at the Tell Arbid site in north-eastern Syria exposed settlement remains dating from the early 3rd millennium BC to the mid 2nd millennium BC. Recent excavations in Sector P, on the eastern slope of the site, revealed the existence of a significant occupation of the Post-Akkadian/ Early Jazirah V period and of levels dated to the Early and Classic Khabur Ware/Old Jazirah/Middle Bronze Age I-II periods. Cereal remains were dominated by grains and ear fragments of hulled two-rowed barley Hordeum distichon. Less numerous were wheats represented by emmer Triticum dicoccon, einkorn T. monococcum, and macaroni wheat T. durum. The presence of bread wheat T. aestivum and six-rowed barley Hordeum vulgare could not be excluded. The two periods contained similar sets of cereals, but in the Post-Akkadian Period the percentage of hulled wheat remains was higher, while in the Middle Bronze Age (particularly in its younger phase) naked wheat slightly exceeded hulled wheats. Legumes were represented by only very few seeds of lentil Lens culinaris and bitter vetch Vicia ervilia. Diaspores of wild plants were very abundant, particularly those from the families of grasses and legumes. The considerable number of ear and culm fragments probably belonging to cereals as well as numerous seeds/fruits of wild plants suggests that the plant remains originated from fodder or animal dung or belonged to threshing waste. The presence of grass stems with nodes indicated that cereals were reaped low on the straw; occasional use of uprooting was suggested by the occurrence of basal culm fragments with traces of rootlets.
We present the results of the archaeobotanical study from Tell Mishrifeh (Syria). More than 130 samples coming from different structures from Operation J have been studied producing an interesting and wide-ranging botanical assemblage which has allowed to reconstruct aspects of agricultural production and food preparation. Two-row barley is the main crop followed by emmer and free-threshing wheats. Cultivated legumes are represented by lentils, vetches, grass peas and possible broad beans. Both 0lives and grapes are also present. Some of the samples represent particular crop-processing steps such as coarse and fine sieving which correspond to the first steps towards the transformation of cereals into food. In addition, it has been possible to identify remains of cereal based foods such as bread. Samples from the bottom part of silos have been also analyzed. The results have contributed to understand some of the techniques used to insulate the silos and ensure the conservation of the vegetable products stored.
Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, 25:6 (2016), 629-645., 2016
The Early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (EPPNB) in southwest Asia is a fundamental period in research on the origins of domesticated plants. However, there are few archaeobotanical data with which to characterise the plant-based subsistence and crop husbandry activities during this time, which hinders the understanding of the factors that triggered the appearance of plant domestication. In this paper, analyses of non-woody plant macro-remains provide new insights into subsistence activities such as crop cultivation (husbandry activities and storage) and plant use (wild plant gathering and food preparation) during the EPPNB at Tell Qarassa North (south Syria). We make comparisons between Tell Qarassa North and the evidence at earlier and later periods as to how plants were used, and highlight similarities and differences in the practices attested, as well as describing some of the consequences that these plant-related activities may have had in terms of labor and social organization during EPPNB.
The Origins of Agriculture in the Near East
2011
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