Glynis Jones

Experiments on the effects of charring on cereal plant components

Abstract The grain, chaff and straw of einkorn, emmer, spelt, bread wheat and six-row barley were subjected to heating, varying the temperature, duration of heating and amount of oxygen available. Some components (and, to a lesser extent, some species) were more readily carbonized or destroyed than others. In the study of charred archaeological assemblages, therefore, allowance must be made for differential preservation under certain conditions.

Crop manuring and intensive land management by Europe’s first farmers

The spread of farming from western Asia to Europe had profound long-term social and ecological impacts, but identification of the specific nature of Neolithic land management practices and the dietary contribution of early crops has been problematic. Here, we present previously undescribed stable isotope determinations of charred cereals and pulses from 13 Neolithic sites across Europe (dating ca. 5900–2400 cal B.C.), which show that early farmers used livestock manure and water management to enhance crop yields. Intensive manuring inextricably linked plant cultivation and animal herding and contributed to the remarkable resilience of these combined practices across diverse climatic zones. Critically, our findings suggest that commonly applied paleodietary interpretations of human and herbivore δ15N values have systematically underestimated the contribution of crop-derived protein to early farmer diets.

Population-Based Resequencing Reveals That the Flowering Time Adaptation of Cultivated Barley Originated East of the Fertile Crescent

Gene resequencing and association analysis present new opportunities to study the evolution of adaptive traits in crop plants. Here we apply these tools to an extensive set of barley accessions to identify a component of the molecular basis of the flowering time adaptation, a trait critical to plant survival. Using an association-based study to relate variation in flowering time to sequence-based polymorphisms in the Ppd-H1 gene, we identify a causative polymorphism (SNP48) that accounts for the observed variation in barley flowering time. This polymorphism also shows latitude-dependent geographical distribution, consistent with the expected clinal variation in phenotype with the nonresponsive form predominating in the north. Networks, genealogies, and phylogenetic trees drawn for the Ppd-H1 haplotypes reveal population structure both in wild barley and in domesticated barley landraces. The spatial distribution of these population groups indicates that phylogeographical analysis of European landraces can provide information relevant to the Neolithic spread of barley cultivation and also has implications for the origins of domesticated barley, including those with the nonresponsive ppd-H1 phenotype. Haplotypes containing the nonresponsive version of SNP48 are present in wild barley accessions, indicating that the nonresponsive phenotype of European landraces originated in wild barley. The wild accessions whose nonresponsive haplotypes are most closely similar to those of landraces are found in Iran, within a region suggested as an area for domestication of barley east of the Fertile Crescent but which has previously been thought to have contributed relatively little to the diversity of European cultivars.

A statistical approach to the archaeological identification of crop processing

Abstract Since the processing of crops has a direct effect on the composition of archaeobotanical samples, variation due to crop processing must be filtered out before using samples for the study of crop economy and husbandry. As the archaeological context of plant material does not often provide a reliable basis for the identification of crop processing products and byproducts, this paper presents a method based on the statistical comparison of archaeological samples with ethnographically collected material and on an internal statistical analysis of the archaeological samples themselves. These analyses make use of differences in the categories of weed seeds extracted at each stage of the crop processing sequence and are thus more reliable and more widely applicable than simple calculations of the relative quantities of grain, chaff and weed. Ethnographic and archaeological material from Greece is used to illustrate the method and some of the wider implications of the results are discussed.

Agrarian ecology in the Greek islands: time stress, scale and risk

A botanical study of crop processing was undertaken on the semi-arid, southern Aegean islands of Karpathos and Amorgos. The present article provides details of the crop processing activities, and some contextual information concerning the wider agricultural economy. Attention is drawn to three aspects of this wider economy (time stress, scale and risk) which are of particular significance for understanding both recent ‘traditional’ and ancient farming practice in the region. Amorgos is discussed in greater detail as the period of fieldwork was longer.

Early crop diversity: A “new” glume wheat from northern Greece

At three Neolithic sites and one Bronze Age site in northern Greece, spikelet bases of a “new” type of glume wheat have been recovered. These spikelet bases are morphologically distinct from the typicalTriticum monococcum L. (einkorn),T. dicoccum Schübl. (emmer) andT. spelta L. (spelt) types previously recorded from Greece and they have also been observed at Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in Turkey, Hungary, Austria and Germany. their taxonomic identification remains uncertain but it seems likely that they are tetraploid, and they have morphological features in common withT. timopheevi Zhuk. Various possibilities exist for the origin of this type but, whatever its origin and exact identity, its cultivation has ceased over large geographical areas since the Bronze Age. At the northern Greek sites, at least, the new type may have been cultivated as a maslin (mixed crop) with einkorn.

Maslins, mixtures and monocrops: On the interpretation ofarchaeobotanical crop samples of heterogeneous composition

Abstract Botanical data from an ethnoarchaeological study of cereal and pulse crops in Greece are used to explore alternativesources of mixed crop samples. In addition to more or less pure “monocrops”, deliberately mixed “maslins” were grown to exploit the tendency of individual maslin components to perform more or less well under different growing conditions. Inevitably, therefore, the composition of these maslins was highly variable. Crop processing may introduce systematic bias into the composition of crop samples and is also deliberately used to manipulate the relative proportions of maslin components in a highly flexible manner. Both monocrops and maslins contain low-level contamination by other cultigens, and it is shown that these were mainly introduced with the seed corn and not through crop rotation or mixing on the threshing floor. Minor contaminants resembling the dominant cultigen(s) in growth habit, seed size, etc., are not only hard to remove but also tend to be tolerated. The implications of these observations are discussed for the interpretation of mixed archaeobotanical crop samples.

Experiments on the effects of charring on cultivated grape seeds

Abstract Seeds of cultivated grape were subjected to heating—varying the temperature, duration of heating, amount of oxygen available and moisture content of seeds. Under certain conditions the breadth:length indices of the seeds were changed to those usually characteristic of seeds from wild grapes. An alternative index, based on the length of the seed stalk, is suggested for the identification of charred seeds from archaeological contexts.

Identifying the intensity of crop husbandry practices on the basis of weed floras

A question of broad economic and social significance is the extent to which farming in prehistoric times, and perhaps even in historical times, was characterised by cultivation on a small scale and with intensive methods. Archaeobotanically, a distinction may be possible between intensive and extensive cultivation on the basis of the weed seeds associated with ancient grain samples. To this end, an ecological study was carried out in central Ewia of the weeds of winter-sown pulses grown both intensively in gardens and extensively in fields. The recorded weed flora was demonstrably influenced by relevant husbandry variables, such as method of tillage (with hoe or plough), weeding, manuring and soil organic content. The closest correspondence, however, was with the size, type and location of cultivated plots, suggesting that the weed flora was determined by a combination of these husbandry variables. In conclusion, the potential is briefly discussed of disentangling these variables for application in an archacobotanical context.

Garden cultivation of staple crops and its implications for settlement location and continuity

Garden cultivation played an important role in early food production but the definition of a garden is often unclear and encompasses a variety of different cultivation methods. This paper explores the intensive cultivation of small plots using horticultural methods through an investigation of garden and field agriculture in the Greek island of Evvia. Evidence is presented to demonstrate that intensive cultivation practices, such as hoeing, weeding, manuring and watering, have a significant impact on soil and crop productivity and are most likely to be applied to areas located near to settlement. The implications of intensive, small-scale cultivation for settlement location, population mobility and land tenure in prehistory are then explored. For example, while an economic system dependent on cereal cultivation does not necessarily involve extensive land clearance or field systems, the investment in land inherent in intensive cultivation provides a strong incentive for remaining in the same place and repeatedly cultivating the same spot.