If the Threshing Floor Could Talk: Integration of Agriculture and Pastoralism during the Late Harappan in Gujarat, India

Abstract

Cultivation of crops as a distinct economic activity is a complex human behavior that needs to be clearly demonstrated in archaeological contexts, particularly to determine whether crop grains were obtained through trade and exchange. The article presents the results of ethnoarchaeological studies focused on the development of crop processing models tailored to aid paleoethnobotanical reconstructions. These newly developed ethnographic models of crop processing and usage were then rigorously applied to the questions of cultivation, economic role, and use of millet crops at two Late Harappan sites in Gujarat, India. The results demonstrate the interpretive potential of identifying the presence or absence of the economic activity of cultivation at a wide range of site types, and such modeling has far reaching implications for interpreting the settlement organization and subsistence orientation of a culture.