Abstract
The present paper reports the first systematic archaeobotanical evidence from Bangladesh together with direct AMS radiocarbon dates on crop remains. Macro-botanical remains were collected by flotation from two sites, Wari-Bateshwar (WB), an Early Historic archaeological site, dating mainly between 400 and 100 BC, with a later seventh century AD temple complex, and Raghurampura Vikrampura (RV), a Buddhist Monastery (vihara) located within the Vikrampura city site complex and dating to the eleventh and sixteenth centuries AD. Despite being a tropical country, with high rainfall and intensive soil processes, our work demonstrates that conventional archaeobotany, the collection of macro-remains through flotation, has much potential towards putting together a history of crops and agricultural systems in Bangladesh. The archaeobotanical assemblage collected from both sites indicates the predominance of rice agriculture, which would have been practiced in summer. Spikelet bases are of domesticated type rice, while grain metrics suggest the majority of rice was probably subspecies japonica. The presence of some wetland weeds suggests at least some of the rice was grown in wet (flooded) systems, but much of it may have been rainfed as inferred from the Southeast Asian weed Acmella paniculata. Other crops include winter cereals, barley and possible oat, and small numbers of summer millets (Pennisetum glaucum, Sorghum bicolor, Setaria italica), a wide diversity of summer and winter pulses (14 spp.), cotton, sesame and mustard seed. Pulse crops included many known from India. Thus, while most crops indicate diffusion of crops from India eastwards, the absence of indica rice could also indicate some diffusion from Southeast Asia. The later site RV also produced evidence of the rice bean (Vigna umbellata), a domesticate of mainland Southeast Asia. These data provide the first empirical evidence for reconstructing past agriculture in Bangladesh and for the role of connections to both India and mainland Southeast Asia in the development of crop diversity in the Ganges delta region.
Highlights
Bangladesh lies in the geographical transition from South Asia to mainland Southeast Asia
The present paper reports the first systematic archaeobotanical evidence from Bangladesh, collected by flotation from two sites, and uses this evidence to argue for an early agricultural dispersal eastwards from India with diffusion from mainland Southeast Asia happening during the Historic period
Two oil seed types are noted, a mustard seed (Brassica sp. or Brassica cf. juncea) and sesame (Sesamum indicum), both taxa that may have been brought into cultivation in the Indus valley region by the time of the Harappan civilization (Fuller and Madella 2002) and spread through South Asia subsequently
Summary
Bangladesh lies in the geographical transition from South Asia (the Indian subcontinent) to mainland Southeast Asia. Zhao 2011; Stevens et al 2016) and some parts of Southeast Asia Castillo and Fuller 2010; Castillo 2011, 2017a), the interrelations between South and Southeast Asia over land are poorly understood, especially with regard to the development of agricultural systems. A recent synthesis suggests that despite similarities in environment and diversity of crop taxa, the South Asian and Southeast Asian prehistories of agriculture were largely distinct with small degrees of relatively late borrowing (Fuller et al 2016a). The first evidence for South Asian crops, such as mung beans (Vigna radiata) and horsegram (Macrotyloma uniflorum), in mainland Southeast
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