Post-harvest intensification in Late Pleistocene Southwest Asia: plant food processing as a critical variable in Epipalaeolithic subsistence and subsistence change (original) (raw)

The objective of this dissertation is to investigate how developments in post-harvest systems may have influenced hunter-gatherer subsistence change during the Epipalaeolithic (23,970-11,990 14C yr BP cal) of Southwest Asia. The term post-harvest system, as it is used here, refers to the knowledge, technology and co-ordination of labour that are necessary to convert raw plants into edible products and/or storable yields. It is argued that post-harvest systems promote increased abundance in four ways: i) permitting a wider variety of plants or plant parts to be added to the diet ii) transforming a single plant part into several forms of food iii) producing physical or chemical changes that improve the nutrient value and iv) reducing spoilage and/or transforming seasonally available resources into to year-round staple foods. Moreover, it is argued that the development of post-harvest systems entailed more than simple increase: that it transformed hunter-gatherer productive systems. A ...