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The Origins and Spread of Domestic Plants in Southwest Asia and Europe edited by Sue Colledge and James Conolly Walnut Creek, CA University College London Institute of Archaeology Publications Publications of the Institute of Archaeology, University College London Director of the Institute: Stephen Shennan Publications Series Editor: Peter J. Ucko The Institute of Archaeology of University College London is one of the oldest, largest and most prestigious archaeology research facilities in the world. Its extensive publications programme includes the best theory, research, pedagogy and reference materials in archaeology and cognate disciplines, through publishing exemplary work of scholars worldwide. Through its publications, the Institute brings together key areas of theoretical and substantive knowledge, improves archaeological practice and brings archaeological findings to the general public, researchers and practitioners. It also publishes staff research projects, site and survey reports, and conference proceedings. The publications programme, formerly developed in-house or in conjunction with UCL Press, is now produced in partnership with Left Coast Press, Inc. The Institute can be accessed online at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology. ENCOUNTERS WITH ANCIENT EGYPT Subseries, Peter J. Ucko, (ed.) Jean-Marcel Humbert and Clifford Price (eds.), Imhotep Today (2003) David Jeffreys (ed.), Views of Ancient Egypt since Napoleon Bonaparte: Imperialism, Colonialism, and Modern Appropriations (2003) Sally MacDonald and Michael Rice (eds.), Consuming Ancient Egypt (2003) Roger Matthews and Cornelia Roemer (eds.), Ancient Perspectives on Egypt (2003) David O'Connor and Andrew Reid (eds.), Ancient Egypt in Africa (2003) John Tait (ed.), 'Never had the like occurred': Egypt's View of its Past (2003) David O'Connor and Stephen Quirke (eds.), Mysterious Lands (2003) Peter Ucko and Timothy Champion (eds.), The Wisdom of Egypt: Changing Visions Through the Ages (2003) Andrew Gardner (ed.), Agency Uncovered: Archaeological Perspectives (2004) Okasha El-Daly, Egyptology, The Missing Millennium: Ancient Egypt in Medieval Arabic Writing (2005) Ruth Mace, Clare J. Holden, and Stephen Shennan (eds.), Evolution of Cultural Diversity: A Phylo genetic Approach (2005) Arkadiusz Marciniak, Placing Animals in the Neolithic: Social Zooarchaeology of Prehistoric Farming (2005) Robert Layton, Stephen Shennan, and Peter Stone (eds.), A Future for Archaeology (2006) Joost Fontein, The Silence of Great Zimbabwe: Contested Landscapes and the Power of Heritage (2006) Gabriele Puschnigg, Ceramics of the Merv Oasis: Recycling the City (2006) James Graham-Campbell and Gareth Williams (eds.), Silver Economy in the Viking Age (2007) Barbara Bender, Sue Hamilton, and Chris Tilley, Stone Worlds: Narrative and Reflexivity in Land scape Archaeology (2007) Andrew Gardner, An Archaeology of Identity: Soldiers and Society in Late Roman Britain (2007) Sue Hamilton, Ruth Whitehouse, and Katherine I. Wright (eds.) Archaeology and Women (2007) Gustavo Politis, Nukak: Ethnoarchaeology of an Amazonian People (2007) Janet Picton, Stephen Quirke, and Paul C. Roberts (eds.), Living Images: Egyptian Funerary Portraits in the Petrie Museum (2007) Eleni Asouti and Dorian Q. Fuller, Trees and Woodlands of South India: Archaeological Perspectives (2007) Timothy Clack and Marcus Brittain, Archaeology and the Media (2007) Sue Colledge and James Conolly, The Origins and Spread of Domestic Plants in Southwest Asia and Europe (2007) Dedicated to Gordon Hillman in honour of his contribution to archaeo botany. Left Coast Press, Inc. 1630 North Main Street, #400 Walnut Creek, CA 94596 http://www.lcoastpress.com Copyright ©2007 by Left Coast Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN 978-1-59874-988-5 hardcover Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data The origins and spread of domestic plants in southwest Asia and Europe / Sue Colledge and James Conolly, editors. p. cm. - (Publications of the Institute of Archaeology, University College London) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-59874-988-5 (hardcover) ISBN-10: 1-59874-988-9 1. Agriculture, Prehistoric-Middle East. 2. Agriculture, Prehistoric-Europe. 3. Agriculture-Origin. 4. Plants, Cultivated-Middle East. 5. Plants, Cultivated-Europe. 6. Plants, Cultivated-Origin. 1. Colledge, Sue. II. Conolly, James, 1968- III. University College London. Institute of Archaeology. GN857.064 2007 630.93-dc22 2007005870 Printed in the United States of America eM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. :g.1EX Typeset using 26' 07 08 09 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Acknowledgments vii Foreword Stephen Shennan ix Introduction: key themes in interregional approaches to the study of early crops and farming Sue Colledge and James Conolly xi 1 Diverse origins: regional contributions to the genesis of farming Andrew Sherratt 1 2 The adoption of farming and the beginnings of the Neolithic in the Euphrates valley: cereal exploitation between the 12th and 8th millennia cal BC George Willcox 21 3 East of Eden? A consideration of neolithic crop spectra in the eastern Fertile Crescent and beyond Michael Charles 37 4 A review and synthesis of the evidence for the origins of farming on Cyprus and Crete Sue Colledge and James Conolly 53 5 Transitions to agriculture in the Aegean: the archaeobotanical evidence Soultana-Maria Valamoti and Kostas Kotsakis 75 6 Archaeobotanical data from the early Neolithic of Bulgaria Elena M arinova 93 7 The spread of cultivated plants in the region between the Carpathians and Dniester, 6th-4th millennia cal BC Felicia Monah 111 8 Seed and fruit remains associated with neolithic origins in the Carpathian Basin Ferenc Gyulai 125 9 Neolithic agriculture in Italy: an update of archaeobotanical data with particular emphasis on northern settlements Mauro Rottoli and Andrea Pessina 141 10 Crop evolution: new evidence from the Neolithic of west Mediterranean Europe Ramon Buxo 155 VI 11 Early agriculture in central and southern Spain Leonor Peiia-Chocarro 173 12 First farmers along the coast of the Bay of Biscay Lydia Zapata Peiia 189 13 Early agriculture and subsistence in Austria: a review of neolithic plant records Marianne Kohler-Schneider 209 14 Neolithic plant economies in the northern Alpine Foreland from 5500-3500 cal BC Stefanie Jacomet 221 15 Archaeobotanical perspectives on the beginning of agriculture north of the Alps Angela Kreuz 259 16 Early farming in Slovakia: an archaeobotanical perspective Maria Hajnalova 295 17 Early neolithic agriculture in south Poland as reconstructed from archaeobotanical plant remains Maria Litynska-Zajq,c 315 18 Neolithic plant husbandry in the Kujawy region of central Poland Aldona Bieniek 327 19 Nature or culture? Cereal crops raised by neolithic farmers on Dutch loess soils Corrie Bakels 343 20 The plant remains from the Neolithic Funnel Beaker site of Wangels in Holsatia, Northern Germany Helmut Kroll 349 21 Exploitation of plant resources in the Mesolithic and Neolithic of southern Scandinavia: from gathering to harvesting David Earle Robinson 359 22 Reconsidering the evidence: towards an understanding of the social contexts of subsistence production in neolithic Britain Chris J. Stevens 375 23 On the importance of cereal cultivation in the British Neolithic Glynis Jones and Peter Rowley-Conwy 391 Index of plant names 421 Index of common plant names 429 Index of site names 431 General index 437 Acknowl edgments The papers in this volume were presented at a conference ("New Perspectives on the Origins and Spread of Farming in Southwest Asia and Europe") which was held at the Institute of Archaeology in London from 15th-17th December 2003. Funding for the conference, including travel and subsistence expenses for the invited speakers, was made available under the auspices of a three year AHRB sponsored project, "The origin and spread of neolithic plant economies in the Near East and Europe". We are thus indebted to the AHRB (now AHRC) for providing the funding for such a successful meeting. Stephen Shennan initiated the research program and oversaw and encouraged all aspects of its implementation, including the publication of this volume, and we offer him our sincere thanks. We would also like to acknowledge the support of Peter Ucko, not least for allowing us to host the conference at the Institute of Archaeology, but also for his encouragement throughout all phases of this project. Similarly David Harris has generously offered us his expertise in too many areas to list individually, and we here recognize the important role he played in bringing this work to fruition. Lisa Usman offered invaluable help not only by overseeing arrangements prior to the conference, but also for organising everything when it was being held, and we are extremely grateful to her for her continued support. We wish also to express our appreciation to Emma Harvey and Meriel McClatchie who also provided assistance during the three days of conference meetings. The construction of a volume of this size involves many people, and we would like in par ticular to thank Jeff Dillane, Rhianne McKay and Nikola Oliver from Trent University for their bibliographic and editorial assistance. At Left Coast Press, Jennifer Collier ensured that the final editorial tasks leading to publication were pleasant and efficient and Eliot Werner skillfully completed the indexes. Marion Cutting at the Institute of Archaeology provided helpful advice throughout the publication process. We are also grateful to the anonymous reviewers who recommended changes that have greatly enhanced the final version of this volume. Most importantly we offer our sincere thanks to all the contributing authors; it has been a great pleasure to work with you all and we hope you feel this volume is a fitting tribute for your efforts. Vll Foreword Stephen Shennan University College London, UK The origin of agriculture and its spread from Southwest Asia to Europe has been one of the most intensively discussed and debated topics in Old World archaeology for at least the last 40 years. It is all the more remarkable then that over the years so little attention has been paid in these discussions to analysis of the concrete details of the exploitation of the new resources themselves and the conclusions that can be drawn from them. This is particularly the case with the plant exploitation side of the new subsistence economy. Two connected reasons for this lack of attention spring to mind. First, it was long assumed that the only thing that needed to be established about these economies was that people exploited wheat and barley, and perhaps the odd legume. On this basis, particular cultures could easily be identified as the first farming cultures in an area and from the subsistence point of view there was little more to be said. All the attention could be focussed on aspects such as the pottery and lithics, and whether these indicated patterns of acculturation or migration. Second, because of this assumption, little effort was put into collecting archaeobotanical data, as it was perceived (wrongly) that few relevant questions could be answered by studying plant remains. Thus, the detailed studies of archaeobotanical remains that were beginning to be carried out by the first members of a new breed of specialists, on the basis of samples recovered through the application of new techniques such as flotation, were ignored by other archaeologists working on large-scale syntheses as being of little interest. The only exception to this was in Southwest Asia where the origins of domestic cereals were being sought and therefore more detailed attention was needed, for example to distinguish between wild and domestic varieties. Even non-archaeobotanists could see that this was an important issue. In recent years, however, this situation has begun to change as it has become clear that un derstanding the adoption and spread of cereal agriculture is about much more than documenting the presence of a small number of domesticates. It involves the reconstruction of agricultural practices. Even more important, the work of archaeobotanists on samples collected using ap propriate methods has shown that the detailed analysis of such samples, and especially of the weed assemblages, provides a basis for reconstructing changes to those practices and the social and ecological factors affecting them. In addition, genetic studies have provided new evidence on origins. To use these new results to understand a large scale evolutionary process such as the origin and spread of cereal-based plant economies makes further demands. The samples analysed and the methods used to analyse them must produce comparable results, and those results must be shown to be at least partly a reflection of past plant exploitation practices and not simply of taphonomic processes affecting the formation of the archaeobotanical assemblages or the biases of a particular archaeobotanist. Moreover, these requirements must be met for large numbers of sites over a broad area, in this case from Southwest Asia to Scandinavia. IX