Domesticated rice, Oryza sativa, is the main carbohydrate staple for most peoples in Sarawak; its dispersal putatively linked to the origins of agriculture and spread of the Neolithic in the region. ...Currently it is argued that domesticated rice is an introduction from mainland Southeast Asia, following either a sea-borne route into Borneo from the north via Taiwan or west via the mainland sometime during the mid Holocene. The purpose of this paper is to reappraise the model and suggest that while rice might have been introduced during the mid Holocene, it was not successful, and in fact might not have been widely adopted until the historic period. Rice appears to be an illogical crop choice in the rainforests of Borneo; it is difficult to grow, prone to failure and often low-yielding. By contrast, people had access to many other high yielding plants, particularly the sago palms which appear to have been widely cultivated in the recent historic past. As a crop, rice, in a vegecultural world of sago and taro, may not have been adopted to reduce the ’risk’ of going hungry, but because its successful cultivation is inherently ’risky’ and prone to failure, and thus uniquely, was attractive as a playing piece in games of social competition between individuals.
Since the publication of Ancient Starch Research (Torrence and Barton, 2006), the number and diversity of archaeological studies utilising analyses of ancient starch have increased to such an extent ...that we feel it is useful to see how this field is progressing, particularly in the areas of taphonomy and contamination. Starch retrieved from novel contexts, such as dental calculus or adhering to shell tools and ethnographic artifacts, has significantly expanded knowledge about diets, plant use and technology. A key research development has been the addition of studies focused on cereals and maize rather than on underground storage organs as interest in the technique has broadened beyond the tropics. While there are grounds for optimism about the successful incorporation of starch into studies that previously focused on botanical remains with a longer history of research, such as pollen or phytoliths, overcoming significant obstacles is critical to the future of ancient starch research. Experimental archaeology is providing much needed data about the contexts of starch loss, transformation and preservation in the archaeological record, but a general model of the processes involved is still lacking. Recent studies have further confirmed that appropriate physical and chemical conditions permit the preservation of native and unmodified starch over very long time periods.
•Ancient starch research has expanded greatly in the past 10 years.•Dental calculus, shell tools and ethnographic items identified as new sources.•Analysis of flours is a significant new growth area.•Residue analysis benefits from studies of use-wear.•Understanding the preservation of ancient starch is essential for future research.
Poor preservation of plant macroremains in the acid soils of southern subtropical China has hampered understanding of prehistoric diets in the region and of the spread of domesticated rice southwards ...from the Yangtze River region. According to records in ancient books and archaeological discoveries from historical sites, it is presumed that roots and tubers were the staple plant foods in this region before rice agriculture was widely practiced. But no direct evidences provided to test the hypothesis. Here we present evidence from starch and phytolith analyses of samples obtained during systematic excavations at the site of Xincun on the southern coast of China, demonstrating that during 3,350-2,470 aBC humans exploited sago palms, bananas, freshwater roots and tubers, fern roots, acorns, Job's-tears as well as wild rice. A dominance of starches and phytoliths from palms suggest that the sago-type palms were an important plant food prior to the rice in south subtropical China. We also believe that because of their reliance on a wide range of starch-rich plant foods, the transition towards labour intensive rice agriculture was a slow process.
Vegetatively propagated crops are globally significant in terms of current agricultural production, as well as for understanding the long-term history of early agriculture and plant domestication. ...Today, significant field crops include sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum), potato (Solanum tuberosum), manioc (Manihot esculenta), bananas and plantains (Musa cvs), sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas), yams (Dioscorea spp.) and taro (Colocasia esculenta). In comparison with sexually reproduced crops, especially cereals and legumes, the domestication syndrome in vegetatively propagated field crops is poorly defined.
Here, a range of phenotypic traits potentially comprising a syndrome associated with early domestication of vegetatively propagated field crops is proposed, including: mode of reproduction, yield of edible portion, ease of harvesting, defensive adaptations, timing of production and plant architecture. The archaeobotanical visibility of these syndrome traits is considered with a view to the reconstruction of the geographical and historical pathways of domestication for vegetatively propagated field crops in the past.
Although convergent phenotypic traits are identified, none of them are ubiquitous and some are divergent. In contrast to cereals and legumes, several traits seem to represent varying degrees of plastic response to growth environment and practices of cultivation, as opposed to solely morphogenetic 'fixation'.
Archaeological research in the African rainforest reveals unexpected results in the search for the origins of hominoid technology. The ancient Panin sites from Côte d'Ivoire constitute the only ...evidence of prehistoric ape behavior known to date anywhere in the world. Recent archaeological work has yielded behaviorally modified stones, dated by chronometric means to 4,300 years of age, lodging starch residue suggestive of prehistoric dietary practices by ancient chimpanzees. The "Chimpanzee Stone Age" pre-dates the advent of settled farming villages in this part of the African rainforest and suggests that percussive material culture could have been inherited from an common human-chimpanzee clade, rather than invented by hominins, or have arisen by imitation, or resulted from independent technological convergence.
A review of ethnological and archaeobotanical evidence shows the potential for a range of starch-rich woody plants, beyond tuberous plants, to have been important foods in prehistoric south ...subtropical China. In this paper we review the size and shape characteristics of starch granules non-tuberous woody plants (Palms, Cycads and Acorns) that our research has identified as important sources of carbohydrates for prehistoric communities. The study sample consists of 34 modern starch reference samples across eight genera (Palms:
Arenga, Caryota,
; Cycads:
Cycas
; and, Acorns:
Castanopsis
,
Fagus, Lithocarpus, Quercus,
and
Quercus
section
Cyclobalanopsis
). Our descriptive criteria are developed granule descriptors standard in the literature and then assessed for their utility using multiple correspondence analysis. The results demonstrate that both morphometric characteristics and the maximum size of granules are valuable for distinguishing starch granules at various taxonomic levels. Of the five morphometric characteristics recorded in this study sample, granule shape is the most effective variable for granule identification.
The article discusses results of organic residue analysis performed on ten copper-alloy daggers from Bronze Age Pragatto, Italy, c.1550-1250 BCE. Metal daggers are widespread in Chalcolithic and ...Bronze Age Europe, yet their social and practical roles are still hotly debated. Are they symbolic or functional? Are they tools or weapons? How were they used? For what tasks and on what materials? The research addresses these questions through a novel application of biochemical staining and SEM-EDX analysis. The method has proved successful in extracting and identifying animal residues located on cutting edges including bone, muscle, and tendons. These are interpreted as evidence of prehistoric carcass butchering and carving. Further residues were observed on blade faces and hafting plates or tangs; these are interpreted as remnants of bone handles and sheaths, the latter made of either wood fibers or processed hide and fur. The readings proposed in the article are validated by original experiments with replica daggers, as detailed in the Supplementary Materials. The analysis and experiments shed new light on Bronze Age metal daggers, showing that they were fully functional tools (and perhaps tool-weapons) primarily utilized for the processing of animal carcasses. This original research result contributes significant knowledge towards interpreting an under-studied, yet socially salient, prehistoric metal artifact.
Recent research in Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia suggests that we can no longer assume a direct and exclusive link between anatomically modern humans and behavioral modernity (the ‘human ...revolution’), and assume that the presence of either one implies the presence of the other: discussions of the emergence of cultural complexity have to proceed with greater scrutiny of the evidence on a site-by-site basis to establish secure associations between the archaeology present there and the hominins who created it. This paper presents one such case study: Niah Cave in Sarawak on the island of Borneo, famous for the discovery in 1958 in the West Mouth of the Great Cave of a modern human skull, the ‘Deep Skull,’ controversially associated with radiocarbon dates of ca. 40,000 years before the present. A new chronostratigraphy has been developed through a re-investigation of the lithostratigraphy left by the earlier excavations, AMS-dating using three different comparative pre-treatments including ABOX of charcoal, and U-series using the Diffusion-Absorption model applied to fragments of bones from the Deep Skull itself. Stratigraphic reasons for earlier uncertainties about the antiquity of the skull are examined, and it is shown not to be an ‘intrusive’ artifact. It was probably excavated from fluvial-pond-desiccation deposits that accumulated episodically in a shallow basin immediately behind the cave entrance lip, in a climate that ranged from times of comparative aridity with complete desiccation, to episodes of greater surface wetness, changes attributed to regional climatic fluctuations. Vegetation outside the cave varied significantly over time, including wet lowland forest, montane forest, savannah, and grassland. The new dates and the lithostratigraphy relate the Deep Skull to evidence of episodes of human activity that range in date from ca. 46,000 to ca. 34,000 years ago. Initial investigations of sediment scorching, pollen, palynomorphs, phytoliths, plant macrofossils, and starch grains recovered from existing exposures, and of vertebrates from the current and the earlier excavations, suggest that human foraging during these times was marked by habitat-tailored hunting technologies, the collection and processing of toxic plants for consumption, and, perhaps, the use of fire at some forest-edges. The Niah evidence demonstrates the sophisticated nature of the subsistence behavior developed by modern humans to exploit the tropical environments that they encountered in Southeast Asia, including rainforest.
Renewed archaeological investigation of the West Mouth of Niah Cave, Borneo has demonstrated that even within lowland equatorial environments depositional conditions do exist where organic remains of ...late glacial and early post-glacial age can be preserved. Excavations by the Niah Cave Research Project (NCP) (2000–2003) towards the rear of the archaeological reserve produced several bone points and worked stingray spines, which exhibit evidence of hafting mastic and fibrous binding still adhering to their shafts. The position of both gives strong indication of how these cartilaginous points were hafted and gives insight into their potential function. These artefacts were recovered from secure and
14C dated stratigraphic horizons. The results of this study have implications for our understanding the function of the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene bone tools recovered from other regions of Island Southeast Asia. They demonstrate that by the end the Pleistocene rainforest foragers in Borneo were producing composite technologies that probably included fishing leisters and potentially the bow and arrow.
The social entanglements of vegetative reproduction are considered for three neighbouring tropical regions that are often considered to exhibit very different histories of plant exploitation during ...the Holocene: early and independent agricultural development on New Guinea; introduction of agriculture to Island Southeast Asia during the last 3000–4000 years; and, Australia as the ‘hunter–gatherer’ continent. Following recent reassessments that emphasise the commonalities of many plant exploitation practices across these three regions, the focus here is upon the shared vegetative disposition, or orientation, of people to plants. The intention is to provide insight on how people's awareness of the vegetative reproductive capacity of plants has been mutually constitutive for the production and reproduction of their social worlds, whether by groups ordinarily referred to as ‘hunter–gatherer’ or ‘horticulturalist’.
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