Emma Harvey

Presumed domestication? Evidence for wild rice cultivation and domestication in the fifth millennium BC of the Lower Yangtze region

Prompted by a recent article by Jiang and Liu in Antiquity (80, 2006), Dorian Fuller and his co-authors return to the question of rice cultivation and consider some of the difficulties involved in identifying the transition from wild to domesticated rice. Using data from Eastern China, they propose that, at least for the Lower Yangtze region, the advent of rice domestication around 4000 BC was preceded by a phase of pre-domestication cultivation that began around 5000 BC. This rice, together with other subsistence foods like nuts, acorns and waterchestnuts, was gathered by sedentary hunter-gatherer-foragers. The implications for sedentism and the spread of agriculture as a long term process are discussed.

The archaeobotany of Indian pulses: identification, processing and evidence for cultivation

Abstract Pulses are a significant component of traditional subsistence in South Asia. Reliable identification criteria for identifying these from archaeological seed remains are reviewed. The botanical evidence relating to the wild progenitors and their distribution, especially of Indian natives (Macrotyloma uniflorum, Vigna radiata, Vigna mungo) is summarised, including new evidence from primary botanical research. The problem of seed size increase in pulses is reviewed through a focused study on Vigna spp., in which it is shown that seed enlargement is delayed by 1–2,000 years after initial cultivation. The taphonomy of archaeological pulses is considered in the context of crop-processing of pulses, in which an important distinction can be drawn between free-threshing and pod-threshing types. The total archaeobotanical record for pulses in South Asia (India and Pakistan) is summarised and key regional differences are highlighted.