The analysis of archaeological plant remains (original) (raw)

New Ideas about the Origin of Agriculture Based on 50 Years of Museum-Curated Plant Remains

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1981

COMMITMENT to the perpetual storage and curation of archae-A ological plant remains was not commonplace in American museums of anthropology until quite recently. The historical bias against maintaining archaeological plant specimens undoubtedly derives from two sources.' First, museums have been accustomed to preserve obvious artifacts of human manufacture. These antiquities were regarded as cultural whereas animal bones and vegetable fragments and charcoal were considered environmental or subsistence evidence. Today, of course, these organic remains are recognized as products of human cultural behavior, because every culture classifies its biological world and selectively hunts or gathers from a range of possibilities. Thus these biological discards are evidence of past cultural principles guiding human extraction from nature. Furthermore, some of these remains are actually artifacts; that is, they represent plants and animals whose genetic composition or natural distribution was so altered by human selection and behavior that they could not survive in place or would not exist at all if it were not for human maintenance. Second, these plant remains are so fragile and heterogeneous in composition that many museums were, and continue to be, ill-prepared for their permanent curation. In both cases, theoretical predilection and benign neglect have led to incalculable loss of irreplaceable research data. Archaeological plant remains are indispensible to many problems of anthropological significance. They are evidence of past natural en

Paleoethnobotany and Ancient Agriculture

A Companion to Ancient Agriculture, 2020

or the human factor. In this case, archaeological plant remains are a means to understand those phenomena that directly touch upon the human experience, rather than the final object of analysis themselves. The approach is thus anthropological in origin and orientation (Ford 1979, pp. 286-287;, and draws from anthropological traditions that are concerned explicitly with the ecological .

A Holistic Approach to Examining Ancient Agriculture

Current Anthropology, 2009

Agriculture provided the foundation for the development and sustenance of Bronze and Iron Age civilizations in the Near East, yet remarkably little is known about how its practice varied across the region at this time. Archaeobotany and zooarchaeology have been used independently to study ancient agriculture, but there is a dire need for a more comprehensive and holistic approach, one that integrates the two data sets and better represents the reality of food production. Correspondence analysis can be an effective tool for quantitatively integrating regional Bronze and Iron Age plant and animal data spanning Syria and Jordan. Distinct regional patterns of food production and wild resource use are evident. The main variable driving this trend is available moisture. Theoretically, the method outlined here can be applied to any region and time period.

A Dialogue Between Empirical and Model-Based Agricultural Studies in Archaeology

Journal of Ethnobiology, 2017

Archaeologists have been examining agricultural societies from an environmental perspective since at least the early twentieth century-study that was enhanced by the advent of new methodologies such as dendrochronology and, more recently, by geographic information systems (Bevan and Lake 2013; Conolly and Lake 2006; Lock 2000) and computational modeling (d'Alpoim Guedes et al. 2016a;. To date, many researchers, particularly computational modelers, have relied upon evolutionary approaches from human behavioral ecology (HBE) to understand agricultural systems. The optimality assumptions inherent in many HBE models are of demonstrable utility in seeking explanations for the origins of agriculture ) and human behavior in agricultural systems (Bocinsky and Kohler 2016). However, some scholars have been concerned with the exclusion of human agency, thus proposing complementary approaches such as niche construction theory . They point out that human adaptations often include intentional and unintentional cultivation of food sources and maintenance of ecosystem services. We agree with other scholars that niche construction theory complements HBE models, in part, by revealing local historical trajectories (Broughton et al. 2010; O'Brien and Laland 2012). Niche construction theory is especially useful when applied in a comparative framework (Zeder 2014, 2016). While scholars have debated on whether an ecological perspective (Rindos 1984) or a cultural view of agriculture (Flannery 1986) is more appropriate, most scholars fall somewhere in between, such as studies on Prehispanic Pueblo societies (Kohler et al. 2012; also see Turner 1993 for development in Mayan archaeology). Agricultural niche models, such as those for maize (Zea mays) (Bocinsky and Kohler 2014); rice (Oryza sativa) (d'Alpoim Guedes et al. 2015); and millet (Setaria italica and Panicum miliaceum), wheat (Triticum aestivum), and barley (Hordeum vulgare) (d'Alpoim Guedes et al. 2016b), have been used to understand social, political, and cultural change . Determining how people perceived and impacted landscapes within which they lived (landscape ecology) requires reconstruction of what an environment was like at a given time. Multiple lines of evidence are needed to reconstruct and understand past environments through a variety of fields such as geoarchaeology, geomorphology, palynology, hydrology, and paleoethnobotany.

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.

After the harvest: investigating the role of food processing in past human societies

Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 2011

Plant processing provides an essential framework for archaeobotanical interpretation since practices of processing lie between the ancient acquisition of plants and the preserved remains of archaeology. Crop-processing stages have received much attention as they contribute towards the interpretation of plants recovered from archaeological sites, linking them to routine human activities that generated these plant remains. Yet, there are many other important aspects of the human past that can be explored through food processing studies that are much less often investigated, e.g. how culinary practices may have influenced resource selection, plant domestication and human diet, health, evolution and cultural identity. Therefore, this special issue of AAS on "Food Processing Studies in Archaeobotany and Ethnobotany" brings together recent pioneering methodological and interpretive archaeobotanical approaches to the study of ancient food processing. This new research, which involves archaeobotany, ethnoarchaeology, ethnobotany and experimental methods, encompasses investigations into dietary choice, cultural traditions and cultural change as well as studies of the functional properties (i.e. performance characteristics) of edible plants, and the visibility as well as dietary benefits and consequences of different food processing methods.