Water, soil and seasonality in early cereal cultivation

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to review current ideas of agricultural development in the sub-tropical and temperate parts of the western Old World and to suggest that the small scale and restricted extent of early cultivation systems gave them a unique character which has not been generally appreciated. Recent studies of prehistoric settlement in the western Old World have shown the basic role of soil moisture in early cultivation, and the association of such sites with riverine and springside locations. The beginning of such a cropping system marked a significant departure from earlier forms of cereal exploitation in the natural habitat zone, and may have involved a difference in growth cycle from that of the wild forms. The kind of cultivation which can be reconstructed as the earliest stage of agriculture is best described as a form of fixed plot horticulture dependent on ground- and surface-water, which differentiated in succeeding millennia into various forms of dry farming and irrigation agriculture. The former path involved the development of cultivation techniques suitable for interfluvial areas, including plough cultivation and swiddening; while the latter involved increasing degrees of water management to enlarge the area suitable for intensive cultivation. Because the evidence for early cultivation systems is so varied in character and the arguments often speculative, three aspects will be considered separately rather than treated in strict chronological or regional order. After a short discussion of current schemes of agricultural development, the problem is approached first from the settlement evidence, and then from the viewpoint of crop ecology, before discussing the development of methods of water-management. The final section sets these observations in a wider context.