The complex evolutionary history of maize (Zea mays L. ssp. mays) has been clarified with genomic-level data from modern landraces and wild teosinte grasses 1, 2, augmenting archaeological findings ...that suggest domestication occurred between 10,000 and 6,250 years ago in southern Mexico 3, 4. Maize rapidly evolved under human selection, leading to conspicuous phenotypic transformations, as well as adaptations to varied environments 5. Still, many questions about the domestication process remain unanswered because modern specimens do not represent the full range of past diversity due to abandonment of unproductive lineages, genetic drift, on-going natural selection, and recent breeding activity. To more fully understand the history and spread of maize, we characterized the draft genome of a 5,310-year-old archaeological cob excavated in the Tehuacan Valley of Mexico. We compare this ancient sample against a reference panel of modern landraces and teosinte grasses using D statistics, model-based clustering algorithms, and multidimensional scaling analyses, demonstrating the specimen derives from the same source population that gave rise to modern maize. We find that 5,310 years ago, maize in the Tehuacan Valley was on the whole genetically closer to modern maize than to its wild counterpart. However, many genes associated with key domestication traits existed in the ancestral state, sharply contrasting with the ubiquity of derived alleles in living landraces. These findings suggest much of the evolution during domestication may have been gradual and encourage further paleogenomic research to address provocative questions about the world’s most produced cereal.
•Researchers characterized genome of a 5,310-year-old maize cob•The ancient maize genome is a basal lineage equally related to modern landraces•There is genetic evidence of naked kernels 5,310 years ago in Tehuacan, Mexico•Human selection on maize domestication traits occurred as a gradual process
Ramos-Madrigal et al. sequence the genome of 5,310-year-old maize cob, which represents a basal lineage equally related to all modern varieties. They provide an in-depth genomic characterization of maize at an early point during its evolution as a domesticate, suggesting that human selection occurred as a gradual process.
The earliest evidence of agriculture in the Horn of Africa dates to the Pre-Aksumite period (ca. 1600 BCE). Domesticated C3 cereals are considered to have been introduced from the Near East, whereas ...the origin (local or not) and time of domestication of various African C4 species such as sorghum, finger millet, or t'ef remain unknown. In this paper, we present the results of the analysis of microbotanical residues (starch and phytoliths) from grinding stones recovered from two archaeological sites in northeastern Tigrai (Ethiopia), namely Mezber and Ona Adi. Together, both sites cover a time period that encompasses the earliest evidence of agriculture in the region (ca. 1600 BCE) to the fall of the Kingdom of Aksum (ca. 700 CE). Our data indicate that these communities featured complex mixed economies which included the consumption of both domestic and wild plant products since the Initial Pre-Aksumite Phase (ca. 1600 to 900 BCE), including C3 crops and legumes, but also C4 cereals and geophytes. These new data expand the record of C4 plant use in the Horn of Africa to over 1,000 y. It also represents the first evidence for the consumption of starchy products in the region. These results have parallels in the wider northeastern African region where complex food systems have been documented. Altogether, our data represent a significant challenge to our current knowledge of Pre-Aksumite and Aksumite economies, forcing us to rethink the way we define these cultural horizons.
Recovery of archaeobotanical assemblages from Late Chalcolithic Bakla Tepe and Liman Tepe in western Anatolia has provided the opportunity for in-depth analysis of agricultural strategies and the ...organisation of farming-related activity at the two sites. We find that Late Chalcolithic farmers utilised five major crop taxa, potentially including two mixed crops. The two sites also provide the first evidence for Spanish vetchling and winged vetchling cultivation in prehistoric Anatolia and the earliest evidence for this practice to date anywhere. We suggest that the settlements were organised into small, co-residential households that processed and stored their own crops, but we also propose that potentially communal extra-household storage and high levels of social monitoring may attest to supra-household cooperation. The later agricultural history of the vetchling species and the prevalence of extra-household storage at sites in coastal western Anatolia and the eastern Aegean islands add to evidence for a cultural koine between these regions in the fourth and third millennia bc. We also suggest that the large size of extra-household storage structures and the narrow range of crops cultivated at some Late Chalcolithic sites are consistent with the emergence of more extensive farming systems than those of earlier periods. Evidence for the use of extensive agricultural production to amass arable wealth by the citadel elites of later Early Bronze Age western Anatolia suggests that the agro-ecological foundations for emergent wealth inequality within the region were laid during the Late Chalcolithic. Testing this hypothesis through direct evidence for the nature of Late Chalcolithic farming systems is a key aim of ongoing research.
•Two more taxa (Ulmus sp. and Salicaceae) are identified in burial shrouds and cordage at Çatalhöyük.•Findings support recent study that tree bast, not flax, was the main textile fiber used at the ...site.•Tree bast taxa were specialized for constructing tabby woven textiles and coarse cordage.
Textiles from Neolithic Çatalhöyük are among the earliest and best-preserved woven plant artifacts from ancient Southwest Asia. Recent examinations of textiles from Çatalhöyük’s East Mound middle habitation phase (6700–6500 cal. B. C.) provide surprising evidence that instead of being made from flax (linen, Linum usitatissimum), as previously thought, the fibers are from the inner bark of trees (tree bast), some samples identified as bast from locally growing oak (Quercus sp.). The present paper reports on a separate analysis of five woven textile and two cordage fragments, also from the middle habitation phase. Our aims were to identify their raw material origins, distinguish the thread-making technology present, and to situate them within the broader chaîne opératoire of thread and textile making in the prehistory of the region. We observed that the thread-making technology was based on an end-to-end splicing method, and while agreeing with the earlier published study, that tree bast, not flax, was the source of the fiber, our results further suggest that elm (Ulmus sp.) and willow/poplar (Salicaceae) were also among the bast raw materials used in textile manufacture at the site. From these results we can infer that the textile makers possessed complex understandings of the biology, physiology, and seasonality of local wild tree genera throughout the surrounding environment.
NW Iberia is dominated by Atlantic climate areas that favour pollen preservation, useful for palaeoecological studies. However, the region also includes Mediterranean sectors in which preservation of ...such palaeoenvironmental evidence is more difficult. To overcome these constraints, archaeological plant macroremains can be used to help characterize flora and vegetation dynamics at a local and regional level. To fill the gap in knowledge in an understudied Mediterranean region, a large archaeobotanical study was conducted at the river Sabor valley, NE Portugal. With 13 archaeological sites sampled for charcoal, fruits and seeds, it allowed the study of vegetation throughout the Holocene, starting in the Mesolithic up to Modern times, with some chronological gaps. Tree taxa dominates the older period and an expansion of shrubby taxa since Bronze age was observed. Diversification of plants used during the Iron Age and Roman period suggests an intensification of resources exploitation and deforestation. These trends seem to be related with changes in human settlements and productive strategies. During Prehistory, agricultural fields were established in flat and wide areas, and, during Iron Age, fortified granaries were used to store large amounts of grains, particularly free-threshing wheat. Drastic changes in settlement during Roman times and the establishment of small farms producing wine and/or olive oil were testified by the occurrence of Olea and Vitis in both anthracological and carpological datasets. Data from more recent periods is scarce. Results highlight that the combination of several proxies and integration of archaeological evidence helps to understand ecological dynamics in areas without pollen data and contributes to the characterization of heterogeneous areas under diverse climatic conditions and with a variety of social trends.
Andrew Sherratt's 'Water, soil and seasonality', World Archaeology (1980), signposted a long-term debate surrounding early farming adaptations to riverine landscapes in western Asia and Europe. ...Recent research at Çatalhöyük in central Anatolia, a key case study in Sherratt's 'floodplain cultivation' model, enables integrated, evidence-based assessment of the local hydrology and agroecology, and of farmers' resilience over more than a millennium. In contrast to previous models, the agroecological niche at Çatalhöyük featured strategic planting of diverse crops across a range of hydrological conditions, within and beyond a broad 'belt' of small anastomosing river channels extending a kilometre from the site. Growing conditions likely depended on location relative to settlement, a nutrient-rich 'hot spot', with diminishing inputs of organic matter and mechanical disturbance away from the tell. This reconstruction contrasts with the original model of 'floodplain cultivation' and demonstrates the complexity with which agroecologies evolved through landscape affordances, creative cropping, and resilience.
Abbo and Gopher contend that we offer nothing new to the study of domestication in three recent papers (Bogaard et al., 2021; Allaby et al., 2021, Allaby et al., 2022b). They claim that we offer no ...“innovation, a new venue of research” and “use a new jargon to express old ideas.” They further claim as erroneous our key conclusions about domestication as: protracted, co-evolutionary, comprising multiple pathways of convergent evolution, and taking place at the landscape scale. Here we defend these recent contributions as genuine progress that builds on previous ideas and hypotheses through empirical illustration and a raft of new data. Combining new data with old and new theory, we develop frameworks that suggest future directions for research.
Archaeobotany, here taken as the study of archaeological plant macrofossil remains, is a mature and widely practised area of study within archaeology. However, plants are rarely seen as active ...participants in past societies. Recent critical evaluations of the field of archaeobotany have focused on methodological issues, chronological and regional overviews and biomolecular developments, rather than theoretical approaches or research practices. This article aims to reflect on future agendas in archaeobotany, which may improve the use and communication of archaeobotanical data, and invigorate discussion. First, the article briefly reviews the development of archaeobotany in Britain, before focusing discussion on the areas of data publication and archiving, and the application of archaeological theory to archaeobotanical remains. Opportunities provided by the 'plant turn' in social sciences and humanities are explored in relation to plant materiality. The use of the Internet in training and analysis is considered, before reflecting on how archaeobotany has been successfully communicated to broader audiences.
•Seeds, wood charcoal, and dung spherulites were analyzed from a Chalcolithic tell site in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.•The inhabitants of Surezha primarily relied upon dung for fuel; wood charcoal ...was not abundant in the assemblage.•Correspondence analysis found spatial differences in onsite plant use and an emphasis on grazing livestock over foddering.•Barley, hulled wheat, lentil, and flax were the primary cultivars at Surezha during the Ubaid–Late Chalcolithic 1 periods.•A large cache of mineralized seeds presents a unique view of Late Chalcolithic diet and possible feasting activities.
Agropastoral subsistence practices can provide important insight into economic organization and surplus production, both integral factors in the emergence and development of socioeconomic inequality during the Chalcolithic Age of Southwest Asia. In this study, we examine evidence for plant husbandry, fuel use, and feasting in northern Mesopotamia during the Ubaid and Late Chalcolithic 1–2 periods (ca. 5200–3800 BCE) at the site of Surezha. Archaeobotanical remains from tell sites like Surezha are the product of multiple, interrelated depositional pathways, which, when carefully disentangled, speak to a variety of human behaviors, including fuel selection preferences, plant and animal management strategies, and commensality. The combined analysis of carbonized and mineralized carpological remains, wood charcoal, and dung spherulites recovered from Surezha document a mixed agropastoral subsistence strategy relying on animal husbandry and the cultivation of barley, hulled wheats, flax, and various pulses. Wild/weedy taxa and crop-processing debris made up a particularly large proportion of the preserved plant remains at the site, and, when combined with abundant evidence from dung spherulites and overall lack of wood charcoal, provide evidence for substantial reliance on dung fuel burning during the Chalcolithic. The dataset also includes one of the largest and most unique assemblages of mineralized seeds identified to date in Mesopotamia, which may represent the remnants of LC 1–2 feasting activities.
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