https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/83E5F94594E19BD9772E067050DBFD78/S0033589400004567a.pdf/div-class-title-holocene-climate-and-cultural-evolution-in-late-prehistoric-early-historic-west-asia-div.pdf

Holocene climate and cultural evolution in late prehistoric-early historic West Asia

Soil Genesis and Classification

Today, farmers in many regions of eastern Asia sow their barley grains in the spring and harvest them in the autumn of the same year (spring barley). However, when it was first domesticated in southwest Asia, barley was grown between the autumn and subsequent spring (winter barley), to complete their life cycles before the summer drought. The question of when the eastern barley shifted from the original winter habit to flexible growing schedules is of significance in terms of understanding its spread. This article investigates when barley cultivation dispersed from southwest Asia to regions of eastern Asia and how the eastern spring barley evolved in this context. We report 70 new radiocarbon measurements obtained directly from barley grains recovered from archaeological sites in eastern Eurasia. Our results indicate that the eastern dispersals of wheat and barley were distinct in both space and time. We infer that barley had been cultivated in a range of markedly contrasting environments by the second millennium BC. In this context, we consider the distribution of known haplotypes of a flowering-time gene in barley, Ppd-H1, and infer that the distributions of those haplotypes may reflect the early dispersal of barley. These patterns of dispersal resonate with the second and first millennia BC textual records documenting sowing and harvesting times for barley in central/eastern China.

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Journey to the east: diverse routes and variable flowering times for wheat and barley en route to prehistoric China

Methods of soil P analysis in archaeology

This review calls for the definition of a landscape approach in archaeology. After tracing the development of the landscape idea over its history in the social sciences and examining the compatibility between this concept and traditional archaeological practice, we suggest that archaeology is particularly well suited among the social sciences for defining and applying a landscape approach. If archaeologists are to use the landscape paradigm as a “pattern which connects” human behavior with particular places and times, however, we need a common terminology and methodology to build a construct paradigm. We suggest that settlement ecology, ritual landscapes, and ethnic landscapes will contribute toward the definition of such a broadly encompassing paradigm that also will facilitate dialogue between archaeologists and traditional communities.

An Archaeology of Landscapes: Perspectives and Directions

Une etude des differentes utilisations de plantes et des pratiques d'enlevements d'ordures dans un village iranien sert de cadre pour une interpretation des residus vegetaux recueillis a Tepe Malyan, centre urbain du 3e millenaire du sud de l'Iran. Le modele ethnoarcheologique propose suggere que beaucoup de graines carbonisees proviennent du combustible (pains d'excrements animaux). En appliquant cette proposition au materiel archeobotanique de T. Malyan, il devint possible de corroborer ces resultats a ceux obtenus independamment par l'analyse des restes de charbons de bois qui indiquent un deboisement continu au cours du 3e millenaire.

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The Use of Dung as Fuel: An Ethnographic Example and an Archaeological Application

An important concern of paleoethnobotanists is accounting for the presence and charring of seeds recovered archeologically. The possibility that seeds can be brought to a site incorporated in animal dung and charred when that dung is burned as fuel is considered. Researchers have shown that animal dung can contain seeds. Ethnoarcheological data from the rural village of Malyan, Iran demonstrate that seeds can be charred when dung is burned as fuel and can be recovered from deposits analogous to those commonly encountered archeologically. A description of the residue from burning dung, based on an examination of modern samples from Black Mesa, Arizona, is provided. Four conditions for determining whether the use of dung fuel might account for the presence of a charred seed assemblage are presented. Finally, two specific archeological examples are discussed in which this interpretation seems plausible for some portions of the charred seed assemblage: the archeological site of Malyan, a third millennium B.C. urban center in southern Iran, and the Tierra Blanca site, a Late Prehistoric habitation site in the Texas panhandle. Disciplines Biological and Physical Anthropology | Social and Cultural Anthropology This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/penn_museum_papers/50 ]. Ethnobiol. 4(1): 15-28 May 1984 INTENTIONAL BURNING OF DUNG AS FUEL: A MECHANISM FOR THE INCORPORATION OF CHARRED SEEDS INTO THE ARCHEOLOGICAL RECORD

/pdf/intentional-burning-of-dung-as-fuel-a-mechanism-for-the-aymk9sdvj8.pdf

Intentional Burning of Dung as Fuel: A Mechanism for the Incorporstion of Charred Seeds Into the Archaeological Record

The two East Asian millets, broomcorn (Panicum miliaceum) and foxtail millet (Setaria italica), spread across Eurasia and became important crops by the second millennium BC. The earliest indisputab...

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0959683616641742

Millet cultivation across Eurasia: Origins, spread, and the influence of seasonal climate

A pollen diagram was derived from a 150 cm core taken from the shallow hypersaline Lake Maharlou in the south-eastern part of the Zagros Mountains, SW Iran. The pollen record shows that Quercus brantii woodland and Pistacia–Amygdalus scrub dominated the area during the late Holocene. The record starts at around 5700 cal b.p. with a dry period during which both Pistacia–Amygdalus scrub and Quercus
 brantii woodland were at their minimum extent. This period was followed by the expansion of Pistacia–Amygdalus scrub in the area and the spread of Quercus
 brantii woodlands at higher altitudes. An important occupation phase, characterized by the appearance of several cultivated tree species such as Juglans, Olea, Vitis and Platanus, started at ca. 4300 cal b.p., coinciding with the onset of the Bronze Age civilization of Jiroft in Central Iran. Human activities become very clear after 3700 cal b.p. Around 2700 cal b.p., extensive stands of Pistacia–Amygdalus scrub became profoundly degraded, presumably under strong human pressure coinciding with the beginning of the Persian Empires. The maximum expansion of the Quercus
 brantii woodland occurred about 2100 to 1700 cal b.p. This woodland remained relatively stable until the end of the diagram at 400 cal b.p.

Vegetation history of the se section of the zagros mountains during the last five millennia; a pollen record from the maharlou lake, fars province, iran

On aborde ici la question de la domestication des plantes et des animaux au moment du passage du Mesolithique au Neolithique ancien au Moyen Orient L'A pose la question de l'expansion ou pas de l'habitat naturel des cereales et par consequence, s'il y a expansion, la question se pose alors des traces economiques et sociales reperables archeologiquement. Est-ce le manque de nourriture, la famine, qui a favorise le developpement de la culture intensive ?

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Naomi F. Miller

Papers

The Use of Dung as Fuel: An Ethnographic Example and an Archaeological Application

Intentional Burning of Dung as Fuel: A Mechanism for the Incorporstion of Charred Seeds Into the Archaeological Record

Millet cultivation across Eurasia: Origins, spread, and the influence of seasonal climate

Vegetation history of the se section of the zagros mountains during the last five millennia; a pollen record from the maharlou lake, fars province, iran

Seed Eaters of the Ancient Near East: Human or Herbivore?