Phylogeographic analysis of barley DNA as evidence for the spread of Neolithic agriculture through Europe

Results of analyses of the photoperiod response gene (PPD-H1) and simple sequence repeats (SSRs) in modern landraces of cultivated barley were used as evidence for the mechanism of agricultural spread in Neolithic Europe. In particular, we explored the usefulness of considering adaptive genes as indicators of past selective pressures acting on crops, during their spread through Europe. In some areas, such as the Alpine region, Britain and Scandinavia, we have evidence to suggest that the adaptation of crops to certain climatic conditions may have contributed to the timing of agricultural spread. At the northern fringes of Europe, and in higher altitude locations in central Europe, the introduction of more suitably adapted cereals may have facilitated successful agriculture to trigger agricultural expansion. This research opens up the possibility of investigating other genetic adaptations to climate, which would permit a fuller evaluation of the relative contributions of climate/crop and forager/farmer interactions in the process of agricultural spread.     

Archaeobotany,vine growing and wine producing in Roman Southern France: the site of Gasquinoy (Béziers,Hérault)

Unequivocal evidence of Roman vine cultivation and wine making is provided from studies of combined archaeological remains from the site of Gasquinoy (Southern France). Waterlogged and charred plant material (fruits/seeds/wood) collected from wells located in the close vicinity of cultivated fields and wine making establishments confirms the local significance of this activity. The results offer insights on particular aspects of wine production (‘traumatic’ treading of grapes and straining) and provide evidence of secondary agricultural activities such as cereal production and fruit tree cultivation. The potential use of monocotyledonous stems such as Arundo/Phragmites in the farming system is discussed.     

Bronze Age Globalisation and Eurasian Impacts on Later Jōmon Social Change

Journal of World Prehistory - From northern China, millet agriculture spread to Korea and the Maritime Russian Far East by 3500–2700 BC. While the expansion of agricultural societies across...     

Correlating archaeological and palaeoenvironmental records using a Bayesian approach: a case study from Sutton Common,South Yorkshire,England

This paper presents a case study aimed at correlating archaeological ‘events’ (obtained from radiocarbon measurements and dendrochronology) from the site of Sutton Common with a radiocarbon-dated pollen sequence obtained from a palaeochannel deposit adjacent to the area of the main archaeological activity. It demonstrates the use of a Bayesian approach to quantifying whether the timing of palynological ‘events’ interpreted as reflecting anthropogenic impacts are likely to be associated with archaeological ‘events’. The results suggest that Bronze Age activity in the form of a mortuary enclosure and associated cremation burials are probably not contemporary with the palynological evidence for disturbance to the oak–hazel woodland in this period. Subsequent evidence for local woodland clearance and agriculture is estimated to precede the construction of the large Iron Age enclosure in 372 BC, with increases in ‘anthropogenic indicators’ following this ‘event’. The construction of the site does not appear to have had a pronounced impact on the local vegetation, with hazel the only woody taxon to show clear reductions. Despite the use of a substantial number of oak timbers in the enclosure palisade, percentages of oak remain remarkably stable. Later farming activity on the site probably post-dates the end of activity in the enclosures. The value of the methodology is discussed in relation to quantifiable and robust correlations of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental narratives of landscape and human activity.     

Phylogeography of einkorn landraces in the Mediterranean basin and Central Europe: population structure and cultivation history

Einkorn (Triticum monococcum L.) was one of the first cereals to be domesticated in the Old World ca. 10,000 years ago and to spread towards Europe and North Africa. Its cultivation declined before the Iron Age and it remains today only as a relic crop in remote areas. To investigate if the geographic distribution of genetic diversity in modern einkorn landrace accessions could be informative about the movement of this crop during prehistory, we genotyped 50 accessions of einkorn from Europe, North Africa and the Near East. Using nuclear and chloroplast microsatellites and clustering methods, we detected two main gene pools in einkorn. The distribution of these lineages revealed differences between accessions from Morocco and the Iberian Peninsula from the rest of Europe and the Near East and suggests different regional dynamics in the spread of this crop.     

Battle/fields: braceros,agribusiness, and the violent reproduction of the California agricultural landscape during World War II

The first years of World War II were marked by a series of battles in and over the fields of California. Workers struggled with growers, growers struggled with the state, and federal and California bureaucrats struggled to gain control over the anarchic labor conditions that marked California agriculture. The introduction of a guest worker program – the bracero program – that brought farmworkers from Mexico to the harvests of California and other states, brought these battles to a head as growers ought to secure their traditional access to ‘cheap labor’ and their presumed right to control the farm labor process in the state. This paper examines these battles to show how growers fought – and managed – to preserve a landscape of great power and profit. The paper argues that the agricultural landscape extant at the beginning of the war shaped the nature of these multifaceted struggles, even as it was an object of those struggles.     

Mid- to late-Holocene vegetational and land-use change in the Hadrian's Wall region: a radiocarbon-dated pollen sequence from Crag Lough,Northumberland, England

Pollen, charcoal and sedimentological analyses of a radiocarbon-dated sediment sequence from Crag Lough, by Hadrian's Wall, northern England, are used to reconstruct vegetational and land-use change since ca. 3000 cal BC. Clearance of Quercus and Corylus avellana woodland began at ca. 2600 cal BC, followed by a substantial decline of Alnus glutinosa and spread of Calluna vulgaris at ca. 400 cal BC. Local cereal cultivation occurred sporadically from ca. 2200 cal BC, with a decline (perhaps associated with climatic deterioration) at ca. 900 cal BC, then an increase at ca. 600 cal BC. Secale cereale was grown in the area from approximately the first to fifth centuries AD, followed by a second phase from ca. AD 1250–1700, when it was accompanied by Cannabis sativa.The sequence is interpreted in the light of the archaeological record, particularly in relation to the impact of Roman military activity in the area. The most significant episodes of woodland clearance occurred in the late Neolithic/early Bronze Age period and then in the middle Iron Age, creating a patchwork of woodland, heather moorland, pasture and arable land by the Roman period. The main changes in the Roman period were a decline in the extent of Betula woodland and perhaps the local introduction of Secale cereale cultivation. Local land management practices involving fire seem to have been suspended in the Roman period, but resumed afterwards. The end of the Roman period may have been accompanied by a shift towards pastoral land-use and abandonment of less favourable agricultural land, but the effect was minor compared to that at other sites in the region. Later shifts in land use may relate to climate variability, as reconstructed from several mires in northern England.     

The development of the longbow in late medieval England and ‘technological determinism’

Traditional understandings of the development of the medieval English longbow and its role in the fourteenth-century ‘infantry revolution’ have recently been challenged by historians. This article responds to the revisionists, arguing based on archaeological, iconographic and textual evidence that the proper longbow was a weapon of extraordinary power, and was qualitatively different from – and more effective than – the shorter self-bows that were the norm in England (and western Europe generally) before the fourteenth century. It is further argued that acknowledging the importance of the weapon as a necessary element of any credible explanation of English military successes in the era of the Hundred Years War does not constitute ‘technological determinism’.     

Settlement and subsistence among the Early Formative Gulf Olmec

Mounting archaeological evidence suggests that floodplain resources, not maize (Zea mays) agriculture, were instrumental in the emergence of Early Formative (ca. 1500–900 uncal BC) complexity across Mesoamerica’s isthmian lowlands. The lion’s share of these data derives from the Pacific side of the isthmus; discussions of the Early Formative Olmec along Mexico’s southern Gulf lowlands have not kept pace. This paper presents settlement and subsistence data that highlight the role of floodplain resources in the development of Gulf Olmec politico-economic complexity. These data support a non-agricultural alternative to traditional models of Gulf Olmec emergence at San Lorenzo, the premier Early Formative Gulf lowlands center. Increased productivity of maize toward the end of the Early Formative period challenged San Lorenzo’s extant politico-economic basis, bringing about a short-term, hyper-acceleration of elite competitive displays. Ultimately, the adoption of maize agriculture generated a reorganized Middle Formative period (ca. 900–400 uncal BC) landscape in and around San Lorenzo. This agrarian adjustment saw occupation move out of the floodplain and into the upland areas, a process sometimes characterized as a cataclysmic system collapse in the Coatzacoalcos basin.     

The institutionalisation of ‘colonial geography’ in France, 1880-1940

Between 1880 and 1900, the conjunction of the development of higher education in France with the renewal of colonial expansion resulted in the creation of the ‘colonial sciences’. ‘Colonial geography’ played a key role in the development of these new disciplines, alongside ‘colonial history’, ‘ethnology’, ‘colonial economics and legislation’ and ‘colonial psychology’. This paper considers the social history of this field and of the institutions in which colonial geography was formed. This involves examination of the study of the teaching of ‘colonial geography’ in the universities and French grandes écoles, the gradual professionalisation of scholarship, and the increase in the number of doctoral theses and book publications, which all serve to demonstrate the vigour of the subdiscipline, leading to the emergence of a veritable research community. Under the Third Republic, ‘colonial geography’ in the universities was characterised by great diversity, irreducible to a single or homogenous ‘colonial discourse’.     

‘Taken captive by the mystery of the Great River’: towards an historical geography of British geography and Atlantic slavery

By examining the case of James MacQueen (1778–1870), this paper initiates a research agenda that contributes to what David N. Livingstone has argued remains the most pressing task for historians of geography: to write ‘the historical geography of geography’. Born in Scotland in 1778, MacQueen was one of the many ‘arm-chair’ geographers whose efforts at synthesising contemporary and historical sources were a significant feature of the encounter between Europe and the rest of the world. Indeed, although he never visited Africa, his speculations about the course and termination of the River Niger turned out to be broadly correct. What makes MacQueen a particularly significant figure was the original source of his theory: enslaved Africans in a Caribbean plantation-colony. In this light, a remark that MacQueen's imagination was ‘taken captive by the mystery of the Great River’ carries a dark double-meaning, because ‘captive’ knowledge was the very source of MacQueen's interest in African geography. Beginning with MacQueen's time in Grenada, the paper explores a series of personal relations, textual traces and West African ethno-histories to reveal how his geographical knowledge and expertise were bound up with Atlantic slavery. This shows not only how the colonial economy, centred on the Caribbean, underwrote the production of geographical knowledge about Africa, but also how British geographical discourse and practice might be probed for traces of Atlantic slavery and enslaved African lives. More generally, the case of James MacQueen illuminates a broader field of relationships between Atlantic slavery, West African exploration, and the development of modern British geography in the late eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries. Examining these relationships is key to writing a ‘historical geography of British geography and Atlantic slavery’ and contributes to postcolonial histories of the discipline by revealing the tangled relationships that bound geography and slavery, knowledge and subjugation, that which ‘captivates’ and those held ‘captive’.     

Networks and Neolithisation: sourcing obsidian from Körtik Tepe (SE Anatolia)

This paper details the use of obsidian sourcing to reconstruct networks of interaction (or ‘communities of practice’) amongst populations of south-eastern Anatolia and the Near East in the context of ‘Neolithisation’ during the late 11th–early 10th millennia BC. EDXRF was used to elementally characterise 120 artefacts of Epi-Palaeolithic – Pre-Pottery Neolithic A date from Körtik Tepe in south-eastern Anatolia. Four eastern Anatolian sources are represented, mainly Bingöl A/B and Nemrut Da?, plus the first evidence for the use of Mu? obsidian. When the source data is integrated with the artefacts' techno-typological attributes it is possible to locate the assemblage within an Upper Tigris tradition (with some interesting local differences), which stands in stark contrast to contemporary practices in northern Mesopotamia and the Levant. These local and regional distinctions support recent views of the Neolithic being much more heterogeneous, with a ‘mosaic’ of community-specific/local traditions of subsistence practices, raw material choices and lithic technologies during the Younger Dryas–Early Holocene.     

Raised bed agriculture in northwest Europe triggered by climatic change around 850 BC: a hypothesis

A sudden decline of solar activity around 850 calendar years BC caused a shift to a cool and wet climate in northwest Europe. Food production suddenly became problematic because of shorter, wetter growing seasons and increased night frost. This climate change triggered innovation and the development of a new agricultural system in continental northwestern Europe: arable farming on raised beds (Celtic field banks) laid out in a more or less checked pattern. This kind of agriculture mitigated the effects of the climate shift by providing better drainage and lessening damage by night frost and thus lengthening the growing season. Once the advantages of this kind of cultivation, soil enrichment and optimum root growth besides the hydrological effects, became obvious it will have been practised on a large scale and introduced when people thought it useful, independent of the local hydrological situation.     

The emergence of rice agriculture in Korea: archaeobotanical perspectives

This paper reviews archaeobotanical records on the beginning and spread of rice agriculture in the Korean peninsula. Argument for the earliest evidence of domesticated rice at the Sorori site, 15,000 years ago, is invalid. The evidence for rice cultivation in the Neolithic (Chulmun) is still insufficient although rice remains have been reported from a few late Neolithic sites in central-western Korea which dated to about 3000 BC. The existence of rice agriculture in the Bronze Age (Early and Middle Mumun: c.1300 ∼ 300 BC), on the other hand, is demonstrated by the high percentage and/or frequency of rice remains among crops recovered from various sites, as well as through the numerous findings of paddy fields. Rice appears to have been introduced from the Liaodong region, China, while so called 'southern diffusion route' that the beginning of rice cultivation was first stimulated by influences from Southeast Asia or South China is no more valid. Charred rice remains recovered from the Bronze Age dwellings consist of dehusked clean grains and weedy seeds are very rare among samples containing rice grains, which could be related with the harvesting and processing methods of rice. Measurements of charred rice grains also will be reported in this paper. Agricultural villages disappear from the archaeological records from the third century BC, which corresponds to the beginning of the Early Iron Age (Late Mumun), and reappear from the late first century with the emergence of urban societies.     

Bronze Age landscape dynamics: spatially detailed pollen analysis from a ceremonial complex

The late Neolithic and early Bronze Age are periods marked by the construction of conspicuous concentrations of ‘ritual’ complexes, used for funerary rituals, seasonal gatherings and communal activities. Understanding the environmental context of monuments may provide detailed insights into relationships between the physical environment and the activities undertaken at individual monuments. Raised burial mounds (barrows) are generally assumed to have been constructed in open landscapes (the so-called ‘landscape openness’ hypothesis) thus rendering them highly visible in the surrounding landscape. This paper seeks to test to what extent vegetation (and in particular openness) around a dense concentration of barrows was actively managed, using three pollen sequences in close spatial juxtaposition to the archaeology. The local vegetation histories, supported by radiocarbon dating, demonstrate spatial differences in vegetation pattern both during the time of monument construction and use (c. 2000–1500 cal BC) and during subsequent periods. They do not support the ‘landscape openness’ hypothesis. This suggests that there is no single ‘blueprint’ for vegetation structure on and around these types of monument complexes. There is no evidence for major restructuring of the landscape during the early Bronze Age. The data describe a major transformation of the vegetation around 1500 cal BC (the Middle Bronze Age) in an area not known for archaeology of this date. This serves to emphasize the role of palaeoecology in augmenting the archaeological record of landscape re-organisation and transformation in prehistory.     

Cultivation of Naked Barley by Early Iron Age Agro-pastoralists in Xinjiang,China

ABSTRACT

We report an archaeobotanical analysis of flotation samples taken from Shirenzigou, an Early Iron Age agro-pastoralist site dated between the fourth and first century BC, located on the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains in Xinjiang, China. The charred macro-botanical assemblage is dominated by naked barley grains with a few broomcorn and foxtail millet grains. In the context of Trans-Eurasian exchange of cereal crops, southwest Asian crops (wheat and barley) and two Asian millets (broomcorn and foxtail) were introduced to Xinjiang a few centuries to a millennium before Shirenzigou was occupied. The choice of barley cultivation in preference to wheat and millet may have been possibly driven by the relatively extreme local environment and the scheduling requirements of mobile pastoralism. Barley is well suited to this environment, and the choice of naked barley in preference to hulled barley may have been driven by the whole grain tradition prevailing in East Asia.     

The first archaeometric data on polychrome Iron Age glass from sites located in northern Italy

A large sample set of transparent and opaque glass artefacts recovered from Etruscan contexts in northern Italy (Bologna and Spina (FE) necropoleis) and dated to a period between the 6th and 4th century BC are analysed in this paper. Samples of highly decorated beads, spindle whorls and vessels of the ‘Mediterranean Group I’ (Alabastron, Oinochoes, Amphoriskos) were selected in order to determine whether these different glass artefacts were produced at the same manufacturing site. While the vessels almost certainly originate from Greece, the beads could derive from a more ancient local production ascertained at the site of Frattesina (Rovigo, Italy) and dated to the Bronze Age.     

First contact: colonial European preconceptions of tropical Queensland rainforest and its people

Northerly expansion of European settlement after Queensland became a colony in 1859 carried with it an inherited interpretation of rainforest ‘scrub’ or ‘jungle’ as nuisance vegetation to be removed because it harboured ‘miasmatic’ disease vapours and covered good agricultural soil. Similar rejection of rainforest dwellers as uncivilized ‘myalls’ reflected a wider ‘dispersal’ policy against all indigenous occupants of land claimed under British colonial entitlement. In terms of performance theory, this paper illustrates the influence of common conceptions held during initial European contact with an environment so different and so remote that for decades it was avoided. Eventually, land pacification with gun and axe brought this last Aboriginal refuge with its diminutive people into the framework of an exploitative economy.     

Ban Chiang and Northeast Thailand; the palaeoenvironment and economy

Beginning with a detailed presentation of the faunal spectra from Ban Chiang and related sites in Northeast Thailand, this essay reconstructs the palaeoenvironment during the period 3500 BC to the end of the prehistoric period. The evidence from the freshwater molluscs found in prehistoric layers suggests that the first occupants of Ban Chiang encountered a habitat with permanent lakes and clear, slow moving streams. Since the lakes contracted in the dry season, there were ideal conditions for practising wet swidden agriculture. From c. 1600 BC, the presence of water buffalo and associated changes in the faunal spectrum suggests the inception of wet rice cultivation. Such agricultural intensification, it is held, follows population pressure and accounts for subsequent settlement in the more arid plains of Thailand.     

Interventions in the political geography of ‘libertarian paternalism’

Contributions from political, health and economic geography, social policy and environmental policy studies are brought together here in order to examine the implications of a ‘libertarian paternalist’ political ‘project’ which seeks to react in pragmatic and ideological terms to the excesses and limitations of neoliberalism in liberal democratic contexts. The authors explore the contemporary relevance and historical antecedents of so-called ‘nudge’ tactics of governing, and draw attention to the political geographies encountered in this popular political programme in specific cases.