Domestication of Plants in the [western] Old World, revised.

No doubt all students and researchers of plant domestication and archaeobotany will be pleased to hear that the revised 4th edition of Zohary and Hopf's Domestication of Plants in the Old World (now Zohary, Hopf and Weiss) is hot off the presses in Oxford. I have not seen a copy yet myself but previous editions, the last in 2000, remains the standard reference work on the crops of the Near East and Mediterranean, their wild progenitors and early archaeobotanical evidence. An updated treatment is only to be welcomed.

new book: Biodiversity in Agriculture Domestication, Evolution, and Sustainability

Apparently just out from Cambridge University Press. I haven't seen the final form yet, but it contains 8 or 9 archaeological (archaeobotanical, zooarchaeological, ethnobotanical) papers, some modern genetics and  studies of recent agrobiodiversity:  Biodiversity in Agriculture Domestication, Evolution, and Sustainability

African archaeobotany volume published

The publication of the 6th African Archaeobotany conference volume, with a december 2011 date, has been announced: Windows on the African Past. Current Approaches to African Archaeobotany, edited by Ahmed Fahmy, Catherine D'Andrea, Stefanie Kahlheber. Published by AfricaMagna.

An Embarrassment for me, as the previous African archaeobotany conference held in London is still not published. Ooops. Hope to have that squared away soon!

Just in time for the 7th IWAA in Vienna.

(and judging for the contents, there is nothing new to add to out lack of knowledge of the early history of Africa rice: so the challenge remains)

Health of archaeobotany: looking good

How does one keep tabs on the health of a discipline? Having just discovered google's NGRAMs tool, an obvious game to play to to plug in ones favorite words, or words for what we do, and see how they may as a percentage of published words (or the words in the massive google books archive) over time. How does archaeobotany do? Although flotation started in the 1960s, a recurrent name for the specialization of studying them lagged behind be almost 2 decades. Interesting use of the phrases "carbonized seeds" took off from the mid-1960s, presumably as a result of the flotation revolution. ). A name for the specialization does become common until almost 2 decades later in the 1980s when paleoethnobotany (American spelling), palaeoethnobotany (UK spelling), and archaeobotany take off. Their take off also correlates with the rise of phytolith research (see below). This graph, although it ends in 2000 also suggests that there may be a move towards a preference of archaeobotany to paleoethnobotany? The decline of carbonized seeds may well track the shift to use of the term "macroremains" which takes off from about 1980 [see below]. The rise of use of the term "phytolith" may start regularly in the 1970s and really takes off in the 1980s. Of course this is only in books and not journal articles, but still...

  

In a far more nuanced and useful approach to disciplinary health, Naomi Miller circulated a questionnaire on archaeobotany, and has summarized the results in a recent issue of the SAA Archaeobotanical record (Sept. 2011), available as a PDF here. This summary looks at field and lab practice, publication and employment. The complete results are on her website at Penn: PDF. There is some useful insights into variation in practices across Europe, the UK and the US, in the commercial versus university academic context, and as an appendix a list of websites that people of reported.

African Archaeobotany 2011

I am still trying to see through my Holiday period intention of flagging some of the archaeobotanical highlights of 2011. Africa, as a continent, remains one of the archaeobotanically least known and so it worth noting a number of contributions over the past year.

One of the best itegrated studies (from anywhere, not just Africa) of wood charcoal alongside seeds, pollen and other lines of evidence for the study of changing cultivation practices, including shifting cultivation in Burkino Faso by Hohn and Neumann, which is in press but on-line.

A important book released in 2011 was Marijke van der Veen's monograph in the Journal of African Archaeology series on Consumption, Trade and Innovation, which reports the archaeobotanical evidence from the Red Sea trade port of Quesir, an site with both Roman and Islamic era evidence as a port site [table of contents PDF]. It has excellent illustrations and straight forward quantitative analyses that highlight the different food traditions of the Roman and Islamic periods, highlights trade in foods (fruits, nuts, spices), and the much more 'globalized' of pan-Indian Ocean in character, with lemons, eggplants and watermelons consumed for their seeds. I am particularly taken by the evidence for two-way flow. This is not just about importing spices and bananas from the East, but I am struck by how many European imports, like hazelnuts, were also consumed in the Egyptian desert. The evidence for imported spices in Roman and Medieval western Europe, reviewed by Livarda 2011, is remarkably Asian-centric (black pepper, cardamon, a single medieval nutmeg) but some African Melgueta pepper has been reported from European Medieval contexts.

Some small contributions from the lab here in London came out, too:

Manning et al. reported the earliest archaeological Pearl Millet, with direct dates between 2500 and 2000 BC from the Tilemsi valley in NE Mali, and evidence from chaff impressions for non-shatteing domestication traits. The discussion (and supplement) include a database summarizing the whole archaeological record of pearl millet.

Giblin and Fuller reported the first archaeobotanical results from the first flotation in Rwanda, dating from ca. 400 AD to 1200 AD, with sorghum, pearl millet and cowpea from the earliest samples. Of note is the recurrence of finger millet, and this article includes a discussion and supplementary database of the whole archaeological record of finger millet.

Nixon, Murray and Fuller published the archaeobotany from Tadmekka/ Essouk in NE mali the trans-Sahaan trade route. It was Islamic era trade city, with excavated material between 700 and 1400 AD. Amongst the staples were pearl millet and wild grains (Echnichloa, Brachiaria), but there is also evidence for wheat (imported or locally irrigated) and cotton processing (imported or locally irrigated), and several fruits. It includes an effort to tabulate the sum of archaeobotanical evidence for medieval west Africa.

Ruas and Tengberg (from the Paris archaeobotany lab) published an archaeobotanical study from Igiliz in southern Morocco, the first ever from the region, which included a detailed consideration of Argan oil production (blogged previously).

Although not strictly Africa, another study from the Paris lab, Bouchard, Tengberg and Pra report evidence from Mada'in Salih in Saudi Arabia, which expands our archaeological evidence for cotton cultivation, and is discussed alongside that from Bahrain, in relation to the role of arid Arabia in producing cotton as part of date palm oasis cultivation systems in Antiquity.

The last article taken with Sarah Walshaw's article on Swahili era Pemba from the previous year (World Archaeology 2010: "converting to rice"), frames the northern and southern limits of early Old World cotton production.

One looks forward to the new contributions at this years African Archaeobotany Workshop. For my part, we are making some progress on flots from SE Kenya, SW Ethiopia, and some from Mali from Kevin MacDonald's Sorotomo project.

Book of plant histories in Europe

Just a quick note, to record a link to a free, on-line book about plants in Europe (mainly Medieterranean and eastern Europe): Plants and Culture. Seeds of Cultural Heritage of Europe, edited by Jean-Paul Morel and Anna Maria Mercuri; the chapters or whole can be downloaded in PDF for free.

Drawing on historical sources and archaeobotany, various chapters deal with vegetables, fruits, gardens and recipes. Topics ranges from a history of peaches in Italy, to a detailed archaeobotanical consideration of Portulaca oleracea (purslane), to a reconstruction of food preparation (recipes) in prehistoric Greece, to renaissance era archaeobotany of Ferrera, Italy.

Studies inspired by Gordon Hillman

Gordon Hillman made a lasting impression on archaeobotany, both through his research and publications, and especially through his teaching. The study of hunter-gatherer archaeobotany (especially in Europe and the Near East), the origins of agriculture, and crop-processing (which he pioneered), would not be the same. In a few months a collection of papers in honour of him by former students, colleagues and those inspired by his work (like myself) will be published by Oxbow Books. Information on contents, are below. [This book was published at the end of July 2009 & presented to Gordon on 2 August]

From Foragers to Farmers; papers in honour of Gordon C. Hillman,
edited by Andrew Fairbairn & Ehud Weiss

contents list:

PERSONAL REFLECTIONS

1. Gordon Hillman and the development of archaeobotany at and beyond the London Institute of Archaeology (David R. Harris) 2. Gordon Hillman, Abu Hureyra and the development of agriculture (Andrew M. T. Moore) 3. Gordon Hillman’s pioneering influence on Near Eastern archaeobotany, a personal appraisal (George Willcox)

THEORY AND METHOD 4. On the potential for spring sowing in theancient Near East (Mark A Blumler and Giles J. Waines) 5. Domestication and the dialectic: Archaeobotany and the future of the Neolithic Revolution in the Near East (Joy McCorriston) 6. Agriculture and the development of complex societies: An archaeobotanical agenda (Dorian Q Fuller and Chris J Stevens) 7. Dormancy and the plough: Weed seed biology as an indicator of agrarian change in the first millennium AD (Martin Jones)

ETHNOBOTANY AND EXPERIMENT 8. Wild plant foods: Routine dietary supplements or famine foods? (Füsun Ertug) 9. Acorns as food in southeast Turkey: Implications for prehistoric subsistence in Southwest Asia (Sarah Mason and Mark Nesbitt) 10. Water chestnuts (Trapa natans L.) as controversial plants: Botanical, ethno-historical and archaeological evidence (Ksenija Borojevic) 11. Evidence of domestication in the Old World grain legumes (Ann Butler) 12. Einkorn (Triticum monococcum L.) cultivation in mountain communities of the western Rif (Morocco): An ethnoarchaeological project (Leonor Pena- Chocarro, Lydia Zapata et al.) 13. The importance and antiquity of frikkeh: A simple snack or a socio-economic indicator of decline and prosperity in the ancient Near East? (Amr Al-Azm) 14. The doum palm (Hyphaene thebaica) in South Arabia: Past and present (Dominique de Moulins and Carl Phillips) 15. Harvesting experiments on the clonal helophyte sea club-rush (Bolboschoenus maritimus (L.) Palla): An approach to identifying variables that may have influenced hunter- gatherer resource selection in Late Pleistocene Southwest Asia.(Michele Wollstonecroft) 16. Aspects of the archaeology of the Irish keyhole- shaped corn drying kiln with particular reference to archaeobotanical studies and archaeological experiments (Mick Monk and Ellen Kelleher)

ARCHAEOBOTANY 17. Glimpsing into a hut: Economy and Society of Ohalo II's inhabitants (Ehud Weiss) 18. Reconstruction of local woodland vegetation and use of firewood at two Epipalaeolithic cave sites in southwest Anatolia (Turkey) (Daniele Martinoli) 19. Vegetation and subsistence of the Epipalaeolithic in Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt: Charcoal and macro-remains from Masara sites (Ursula Thanheiser) 20. The uses of Eryngium yuccifolium by Native American people (Maria Scott Standifer et al.) 21. Bananas: Towards a revised prehistory (Jean Kennedy) 22. The advance of agriculture in the coastal zone of East Asia (Elena Sergusheva and Yury Vostretsov) 23. Knossos, Crete: Invaders, “sea goers”, or previously “invisible”, the Neolithic plant economy appears fully-fledged in 9,000 B.P. (Anaya Sarpaki) 24. Reconstructing the ear morphology of ancient small-grain wheat (Triticum turgidum ssp. parvicoccum) (Mordachi Kislev) 25. The Khalub-tree in Mesopotamia: Myth or Reality (Naomi Miller and Alhena Gadotti) 26. The archaeobotany of cotton (Gossypium sp. L) in Egypt and Nubia with special reference to Qasr Ibrim, Egyptian Nubia (Alan Clapham and Peter Rowly -Conwy) 27. Questions of continuity: Fodder and fuel use in Bronze Age Egypt (Mary Anne Murray) 28. Food and culture: the plant foods from Roman and Islamic Quseir, Egypt (Marijke van der Veen, Jacob Morales, Alison Cox)