Early Rice Project symposium last week

Last week we hosted in London a symposium for the Early Rice Project, 

Investigating the evolution and impact of rice cultivation through the later prehistory of monsoon Asia. We brought in colleagues and collaborators on the archaeology of India, Southeast Asia and China, from countries across several continents, and had a success full exchange, not just on the archaeobotany of the region and new data (much of it generated at UCL through our NERC and ERC projects), but also on the stories of domesaticated fauna, our current understanding of Neolithic spread processes, Mesolithic persistence, demographic growth and the emergence of complex societies and irrigation. What is clear is that there is much new to say about rice, when it first arrived in several regions of monsoon Asia, and as it was transformed into the cornerstone species in the subsistence base of large complex societies. Nevertheless the meeting highlighted also the major gaps in empirical evidence, both geographically and chronologically. We hope to be able to pull this together for publication to further broaden out our dialogue on what we know and what we need to know. There has certainly been a rapid increase in data as the chart (below) of published, or recently counted archaeological spikelet bases indicates (from my introduction presentation)..

Some recent outputs from the Early Rice Project include publication of ancient DNA from charred rice grains from sites in Thailand and India (Castillo, Tanaka et al.), which add some flesh on the skeleton of the Proto-indica hypothesis; and publication of the first of a new generation spatial modelling of the early geography of rice, this one aimed at deducing the most like region (or regions) from which rice originated and spread, in particular the originals of early japonica rice that was so important to the Neolithic developments in China and throughout Southeast Asia (Silva et al. in PLOSone).  See also, the paper on phytoliths as a reflection of weed flora (Weisskopf et al 2014), the first of several in the pipeline that will illustrate new and more robust approaches to determining past rice ecology.

IWGP 2013 website

The International Work group for Palaeoethnobotany, the only major international meeting in archaeobotany (every 3 years), has its next conference in about a year's time in Greece. Its website it now live. In general this conference has a Eurasian focus. For those with African interests, there is the smaller IWAA, also every three years, and meeting this July.

IWGP session topic on archaeogenetics

We have another session proposal for the next IWGP. The title of the session is:

Plant archaeogenetics and archaeogenomics

Session organizers are Angela Schlumbaum, Basel and Terry Brown, Manchester. Those interested in contributing please contact the session organisers.


This can be added to two earlier proposed thematic sessions: 

The role wild foods amongst early farmers and late foragers

(Proposal for a thematic session at IWGP 2013, Greece) By Dorian Q Fuller and Soultania Valamoti

and

Food Globalization in Prehistory Across Eurasia. Chair of a session: Prof. Martin K. Jones


The conference website is now live (but has not been formally announced): it includes a list of session topics.

Wood charcoal papers online

It recently came to my attention that last year's meet of archaeological charcoal analysts (mainly European), has a nice set of extended abstracts (or short papers) published freely on line as a special number of the Spanish periodical Saguntum. The wood charcoal papers are here, amongst which are number of interesting study, including a Irish study on quantification issues attempting to identify saturation points, the fragment count at which taxa diversity in a sample stops increasing: for Ireland this appear to be around 20 taxa. A French study develops the Dufraisse model for using charcoal ring diameters to model the size of fire wood being collected as a way into human behavioral patterns in wood exploitation (image at left). Eleni Asouti explores the wood charcoal from Catal Hoyuk which fits neither with a straight forward model of climate-driven change in taxa or anthropogenic over-exploitation models. Meanwhile a burnt down building from PPNB Qarassa in Syria provides a glimpse into the construction material used in early villages in the Levant. You can also find a small, but pioneering study of charcoal from Chinese flotation samples taken in a region survey, an analysis of some Yanghao-Longshan charcoal from the Ying valley in Eastern Henan-- which provides evidence for the dominance of oak forests, oak as fuel source, despite a seed record that is dominated by cultivated millets, lacking evidence for acorn consumption. Although we lack good earlier archaeobotanical evidence from this particularly region, it does still suggest a contrast with the earlier predominance of acorns elsewhere in China. By the Yangshao period agriculture had pretty much taken over and wild foods were in decline, although the Yangsaho period still shows a higher range of wild fruits than we find in subsequent periods in the Ying (see Zhang et al in J. Arch Sci 2010).

And there are many other charcoal studies there I have yet to explore.

Another IWGP theme:Food Globalization in Prehistory Across Eurasia

Another proposal for  a thematic session at IWGP 2013, Thessaloniki, has come through. This is not from me, but from Cambridge so interest should be sent as appropiate to some of the Cambridge archaeobotanical post-doc (website), Geidre Motuzaite Matuzeviciuit or Liu Xinyi. This lab has been active on the research of temperate millets for a while (previous blog), including recognition of immature Panicum.

This topic obviously relates to the discussion article that this group published in the last World Archaeology, on food globalization in prehistoric Eurasia (which I have not gotten around to commenting on previously in this blog.

Here is the precis for their session: Food Globalization in Prehistory Across Eurasia. Chair of a session: Prof. Martin K. Jones

 A variety of crops that originated in China or central Asia, such as the Chinese millets and buckwheat, had appeared in Europe by the 5^th millennium BC, while by the end of the second millennium BC, the south-west Asian crops, wheat and barley, had reached several parts of China.

There are some striking features of that early phase of food globalisation, features that relate both to the crop plants themselves and to the societies that utilised them. A series of later episodes of globalisation, from the Classical period onwards, involve exotic fruits, vegetables and spices. The earlier phase, however, is manifested in evidence for staple sources of grain starch, the cereals, and the 'pseudo-cereal' buckwheat. 

We would like to invite papers or poster on current archaeobotanical and genetics studies that aim to establish when and how that early globalisation of staple foodstuffs happened, what it meant for human societies in very different parts of Eurasia, and what it meant for the plants upon which they relied for food.

What role wild foods for Neolithic farmers? A proposed thematic session for next years IWGP

Next year (2013) sees the next International Workgroup in Palaeoethnobotany conference go to Thessaloniki Greece. Together with the overall conference organizer I am proposing a session on the role of wild foods in the Neolithic and what was special about it. This will be circulated through the regular conference channels, but to start a precis is here.

The role wild foods amongst early farmers and late foragers

(Proposal for a thematic session at IWGP 2013, Greece) By Dorian Q Fuller and Soultania Valamoti

The Neolithic transition to cultivation and reliance on domesticated grains is a major focus of archaeobotanical research, but do we have a “cereal-bias” that means we undervalue the continued roles of wild food sources amongst early farmers? Looking over archaeobotanical reports from Early Neolithic Europe or the Prepottery Near East, one often finds quite substantial quantities of remains of wild food resources, potential co-staples,  or secondary staples, perhaps more than just fall back foods. The recent rise of archaeobotanical sampling in China has revealed that in the same culture in which domestication of rice is taking place the quantities of wild nut remains are vast and out- number rice. These wild foods might include nuts (Corylus or Quercus in Europe, Pistacia or Amygdalus in the Near East, Lithocarpus/Quercus, Trapa, Euryale in East Asia) or nutlets (Polygonaceae, Cyperaceae) or some small seeds (e.g. Chenopodium), as well as wild fruits. While the large quantities of these show some similarities to pre-agricultural assemblages: what has changed in their use with the advent of agriculture? There also appears to be an almost uniform contrast with later prehistory: perhaps sites of the later Neolithic or Bronze Age or Iron Age provide scant evidence for these same taxa, implying some changes since the earlier agricultural economies. Drawing largely on American evidence and Jomon Japan, Bruce Smith (2001), proposed the concept of “low-level food production“ for the first domesticators and early cultivators, in which the majority of food is inferred to come from wild sources, but despite the high levels of wild foods in the earlier Neolithic across Eurasia, it seem difficult to accept that this “low level” category necessarily applies where cereals clearly have high ubiquity and counts. The aim of this session to consider in further detail how particular sites and regional sequences inform on the role and importance of wild foods in the early Neolithic and how this may have differed from either full foraging “broad spectrum” economies or later more intensively agricultural economies. Is there a wild-side to the Neolithic that made it different from later agricultural economies? And how do we accommodate this to our understanding of the beginnings and spread of agriculture?

Paper presentations and poster presentations welcome. Please indicate your interest by emailing a provisional title to Dorian (d.fuller@ucl.ac.uk) , but also return your pre-registration form to Tania Valamoti. 

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)

International Workshop for African Archaeobotany

The 7th international workshop for African Archaeobotany, and important small gathering every 3 years, now has a website for its next meeting, next summer in Vienna. Looking forward to it.

Recent Yucatan symposium

In March, a small Wenner-Gren symposium on the origins of agriculture was held in Hacienda Temezon, Yucatan. A synoptic report by the organizers (T. Doug Price & Ofer Bar-Yosef), can now be found on the Wenner-Gren website. The publication is intended to come out in early 2010.