It is difficult to overstate the cultural and biological impacts that the domestication of plants and animals has had on our species. Fundamental questions regarding where, when, and how many times domestication took place have been of primary interest within a wide range of academic disciplines. Within the last two decades, the advent of new archaeological and genetic techniques has revolutionized our understanding of the pattern and process of domestication and agricultural origins that led to our modern way of life. In the spring of 2011, 25 scholars with a central interest in domestication representing the fields of genetics, archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, geoarchaeology, and archaeology met at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center to discuss recent domestication research progress and identify challenges for the future. In this introduction to the resulting Special Feature, we present the state of the art in the field by discussing what is known about the spatial and temporal patterns of domestication, and controversies surrounding the speed, intentionality, and evolutionary aspects of the domestication process. We then highlight three key challenges for future research. We conclude by arguing that although recent progress has been impressive, the next decade will yield even more substantial insights not only into how domestication took place, but also when and where it did, and where and why it did not.

/pdf/current-perspectives-and-the-future-of-domestication-studies-1k2zua6l88.pdf

Current perspectives and the future of domestication studies

The impact of manuring on nitrogen isotope ratios in cereals: archaeological implications for reconstruction of diet and crop management practices

http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1447786/1/1-s2.0-S0305440314002982-main.pdf

Reconstructing regional population fluctuations in the European Neolithic using radiocarbon dates: a new case-study using an improved method

Formation processes of desiccated and carbonized plant remains - the identification of routine practice.

We consider the long-term relationship between human demography, food production, and Holocene climate via an archaeological radiocarbon date series of unprecedented sampling density and detail. There is striking consistency in the inferred human population dynamics across different regions of Britain and Ireland during the middle and later Holocene. Major cross-regional population downturns in population coincide with episodes of more abrupt change in North Atlantic climate and witness societal responses in food procurement as visible in directly dated plants and animals, often with moves toward hardier cereals, increased pastoralism, and/or gathered resources. For the Neolithic, this evidence questions existing models of wholly endogenous demographic boom–bust. For the wider Holocene, it demonstrates that climate-related disruptions have been quasi-periodic drivers of societal and subsistence change.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/114/49/E10524.full.pdf

Holocene fluctuations in human population demonstrate repeated links to food production and climate.

The expansion of agrarian societies towards the north – new evidence for agriculture during the Mesolithic/Neolithic transition in Southern Scandinavia

Kvavadze et al. (Brevia, 11 September 2009, p. 1359) identified fiber samples as 30,000-year-old flax based on a comparison with modern flax fibers analyzed by compound microscope and on the presence of dislocations/nodes in the fibers. We argue that this evidence is not sufficient to identify the fibers as flax.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/328/5986/1634.2.full.pdf

Comment on "30,000-year-old wild flax fibers".

Archaeobotanical results from the investigations of cereal finds in southwestern Germany and northern Switzerland have been mapped. Seven phases are distinguished, from Roman to early modern (Post-medieval). Methodological problems are discussed concerning sampling, identification, preservation, type of site, feature and assemblage, which influence the representation of the results. The main results are as follows. In the Roman period, Triticum spelta was the main crop, except in the upper Rhine valley (Oberrheinebene) where T. aestivum was more abundant. In the Migration period and Early Medieval period several crops are of similar importance. The reason was a rather simple economic system, a subsistence economy for each village, and perhaps cereal and grassland rotation (Feld-Gras-Wirtschaft). In the High Medieval period, Secale cereale was the dominant grain in the northern part of the region up to the Danube (Donau). In Switzerland, T. spelta dominated. In the landscape in between, from Lake Constance (Bodensee) to the upper Neckar valley, there was a mixture of both. These rather clear spectra, commonly dominated by one cereal species, express the changed economic system: the three field system (Dreifelderwirtschaft) and an increasing role of the market economy. Even in the Late Medieval and Post-medieval periods S. cereale and T. spelta remained the main crops. The present dominance of T. aestivum and Hordeum vulgare is a very recent development, less than a century old. The less important cereals, T. monococcum and Panicum miliaceum, occur regularly until Post-medieval times. T. dicoccum was very rare in this region from the Roman period onwards.

The history of cereals in the region of the former Duchy of Swabia ( Herzogtum Schwaben ) from the Roman to the Post-medieval period: results of archaeobotanical research

(1998). Winter- and Spring-foddering of Sheep/Goat in the Bronze Age Site of Fiave-Carera, Northern Italy. Environmental Archaeology: Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 87-94.

Winter- and Spring-foddering of Sheep/Goat in the Bronze Age Site of Fiavè-Carera, Northern Italy

During archaeological excavations at several wetland sites around Lake Federsee, remains of water chestnut were detected. The finds are dated to between the 4th and 1st millennia BC. Until recently the starch-containing nuts of water chestnut were used for human nutrition in Europe. The nuts can easily be harvested in autumn. Pollen and plant macrofossil remains from several sites are proof of a wide distribution during the Holocene, probably influenced by humans. Nowadays this annual water plant is extinct in many parts of Europe. The growing conditions of water chestnut are strongly restricted with regard to water quality, depth and temperature, and therefore finds of this plant have the potential to allow reconstruction of former ecological conditions.

Sabine Karg

Papers

The expansion of agrarian societies towards the north – new evidence for agriculture during the Mesolithic/Neolithic transition in Southern Scandinavia

Comment on "30,000-year-old wild flax fibers".

The history of cereals in the region of the former Duchy of Swabia ( Herzogtum Schwaben ) from the Roman to the Post-medieval period: results of archaeobotanical research

Winter- and Spring-foddering of Sheep/Goat in the Bronze Age Site of Fiavè-Carera, Northern Italy

The water chestnut (Trapa natans L.) as a food resource during the 4th to 1st millennia BC at Lake Federsee, Bad Buchau (southern Germany)