Early Plant Domestication Research Articles

The cultural and ecological context of early plant domestication

The cultural and ecological context of early plant domestication

Direct archaeological evidence for Southwestern Amazonia as an early plant domestication and food production centre.

Southwestern Amazonia is considered an early centre of plant domestication in the New World, but most of the evidence for this hypothesis comes from genetic data since systematic archaeological fieldwork in the area is recent. This paper provides first-hand archaeobotanical evidence of food production from early and middle Holocene (ca. 9,000–5000 cal. BP) deposits at Teotonio, an open-air site located on a 40 m-high bluff on the south bank of the Madeira river. Such evidence includes the presence of local and exotic domesticates such as manioc (Manihot esculenta), squash (Cucurbita sp.) and beans (Phaseolus sp.), alongside edible fruits such as pequiá (Caryocar sp.) and guava (Psidium sp.) that point to the beginnings of landscape domestication. The results contribute to an ever-growing number of studies that posit southwest Amazonia as an important centre for early crop domestication and experimentation, and which highlight the longue-durée of human impacts on tropical forest biodiversity around the world.

Archaic Period Domesticated Plants in the Mid-Ohio Valley

Abstract Late Archaic archaeobotanical remains from the County Home site (33AT40), southeastern Ohio, are described. Measurements of chenopod (Chenopodium berlandieri) seed-coat thicknesses and marshelder (Iva annua) achene and kernel lengths from the site are indicative of domesticated types (ssp. jonesianum and var. macrocarpa, respectively) dating to ca. 3000 B.P. to 3600 B.P. Together, these specimens represent some of the earliest evidence of plant domestication outside the oak-hickory and oak-savannah forests of eastern North America. The recovery of these plants with other cultigens in hearths and earth ovens at the County Home site indicates that the timing for the arrival of the Initial Crop Complex in the Appalachian mixed forest of the middle Ohio Valley occurred earlier than previously documented. The results of this research contribute to the growing database of early plant domestication and a broader understanding of the origins of food production.

Archaic Period Domesticated Plants in the Mid-Ohio Valley: Archaeobotanical Remains from the County Home Site (33at40), Southeastern Ohio

Late Archaic archaeobotanical remains from the County Home site (33AT40), southeastern Ohio, are described. Measurements of chenopod (Chenopodium berlandieri) seed-coat thicknesses and marshelder (Iva annua) achene and kernel lengths from the site are indicative of domesticated types (ssp. jonesianum and var. macrocarpa, respectively) dating to ca. 3000 B.P. to 3600 B.P. Together, these specimens represent some of the earliest evidence of plant domestication outside the oak-hickory and oak-savannah forests of eastern North America. The recovery of these plants with other cultigens in hearths and earth ovens at the County Home site indicates that the timing for the arrival of the Initial Crop Complex in the Appalachian mixed forest of the middle Ohio Valley occurred earlier than previously documented. The results of this research contribute to the growing database of early plant domestication and a broader understanding of the origins of food production.

New World Paleoethnobotany in the New Millennium (2000–2013)

This article evaluates the current state of paleoethnobotany since Hastorf’s 1999 review published in this journal. We discuss advances in methods, ancient subsistence reconstructions, the origins and intensification of agriculture, and how plants inform on issues of political economy and identity. Significant methodological developments in the extraction, identification, and analysis of starch grains and phytoliths have led to advancements in our knowledge of early plant domestication and the transition to food production. Paleoethnobotanists increasingly are using more complex quantitative techniques to characterize their data, which have resulted in more nuanced interpretations of plants that fall within the purview of social archaeology and allow us to address issues related to gender, identity, and ritual practice.

Shifts and disruptions in resource-use trait syndromes during the evolution of herbaceous crops.

Trait-based ecology predicts that evolution in high-resource agricultural environments should select for suites of traits that enable fast resource acquisition and rapid canopy closure. However, crop breeding targets specific agronomic attributes rather than broad trait syndromes. Breeding for specific traits, together with evolution in high-resource environments, might lead to reduced phenotypic integration, according to predictions from the ecological literature. We provide the first comprehensive test of these hypotheses, based on a trait-screening programme of 30 herbaceous crops and their wild progenitors. During crop evolution plants became larger, which enabled them to compete more effectively for light, but they had poorly integrated phenotypes. In a subset of six herbaceous crop species investigated in greater depth, competitiveness for light increased during early plant domestication, whereas diminished phenotypic integration occurred later during crop improvement. Mass-specific leaf and root traits relevant to resource-use strategies (e.g. specific leaf area or tissue density of fine roots) changed during crop evolution, but in diverse and contrasting directions and magnitudes, depending on the crop species. Reductions in phenotypic integration and overinvestment in traits involved in competition for light may affect the chances of upgrading modern herbaceous crops to face current climatic and food security challenges.

Anything but a backwater

In the spring of 1970, tired of the chilly Philadelphia winters where I was studying archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, I arranged to spend a semester at the University of Hawai'i. There I enrolled in Professor Wilhelm G. Solheim II's course inthe prehistory of Southeast Asia. Bill Solheim — a colorful character if ever there was one, with his handle-bar mustache and endless anecdotes — was just then stirring up the sleepy field of Southeast Asian archaeology and prehistory. Together with his graduate students Chet Gorman and Don Bayard, Bill was making all kinds of startling claims about thecourse of cultural evolution in what most scholars had taken to be a secondary backwater: evidence for strikingly early plant domestication from Spirit Cave, precocious advances in bronze metallurgy at Non Nok Tah, and similar claims. At the time, Peter Bellwood, then based at the University of Auckland, was still focused on research among the islands of eastern Polynesia. But Peter saw the exciting developments coming out of Southeast Asia and soon decamped to The Australian National University in Canberra. Out of this new base he began his long and fruitful career of fieldwork in island Southeast Asia, and as the preeminent synthesiser of the region's prehistory.

Early Agriculture in Primorye, Russian Far East: New Radiocarbon and Pollen Data from Late Neolithic Sites

Russian Far East as a part of Northeast Asia is one of the centres of early plant domestication, particularly with respect to millet. New radiocarbon AMS dates associated with the pollen of cultivated cereals (Cerealia) from Late Neolithic layers on the Boisman 2 and Novoselische 4 sites allow estimates of the beginning of foxtail millet (Setaria italica(L.) Beauv.) cultivation about 4200-3700BP(2900–2000 cal-BC), and possibly up to 4900BP(4100 cal-BC) in Primorye (southern Russian Far East).

Radiocarbon dating: The continuing revolution

AbstractRadiocarbon (14C) dating, now in its fifth decade of general use, continues to be the most widely employed method of inferring chronometric age for late Pleistocene and Holocene age materials recovered from archeological contexts. Over the last decade, several technical advances in 14C studies have provided contexts for a number of significant applications in archeology that were previously either not possible or not practical. These include the extension of the calibrated 14C time scale into the late Pleistocene and the development of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). The contribution of AMS‐based 14C values to the critical evaluation of archeological data is illustrated by considering the problems of dating early plant domestication in the Near East and Mesoamerica, New World Paleoindian human skeletal materials, and European Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic materials.

ARID‐LAND FORAGING AS SEEN FROM AUSTRALIA: ADAPTIVE MODELS AND BEHAVIORAL REALITIES

This paper reviews assumptions guiding earlier models of social and economic behavior among arid land hunter‐gatherers, especially those models that argued for the ‘original affluent society’ and concepts requiring groups of fixed size and composition operating within stable, bounded territories. A close look at socioeconomic behavior among ethnographic Ngatatjara Aborigines of the Western Desert challenges these assumptions and introduces an adaptive model based on ‘strategy switching’. In order to minimize risks imposed by droughts, the Ngatatjara responded in their movements and group composition by means of two alternative strategies: drought escape and drought evasion. Drought escape involved temporary abandonment of entire areas by individual households or by individuals to distant, better‐favored areas. Drought evasion involved retreat by small family groups into areas within their ‘home’ country where relatively dependable water resources were available. Drought escape and drought evasion strategies are briefly considered as factors in early plant domestication in the context of prehistoric arid‐land foraging societies in places like the Tehuacan Valley on the Mexican Plateau.

The Hoabinhian and after: Subsistence patterns in Southeast Asia during the late Pleistocene and early recent periods

Abstract This paper brings together previously published material and the writer's analysis of recently excavated material from Spirit Cave, northern Thailand, in order to synthesize a chronology and a more detailed reconstruction of Hoabinhian exploitative patterns during the late Pleistocene/ early Recent periods in Southeast Asia. Hoabinhian subsistence patterns are described as the broad spectrum exploitation of both plants and animals. The transition from hunting and gathering to early plant domestication and a concomitant shift in population densities from upland to lowland bases in Southeast Asia is discussed and compared with similar early developments towards domestication in the Near East.

Some Considerations of Early Plant Domestication

Early domestication of plants has effected lasting changes on man and his environment. These changes have caused both the ills and benefits of present-day agriculture.