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 population of early tudor England: a re-evaluation of the 1522 Muster Returns and 1524 and 1525 Lay Subsidies

The Lay Subsidies of 1524 and 1525 provide a much fuller enumeration of the adult male population of England than hitherto appreciated. The basis for this argument is a detailed comparison of the Muster Returns of 1522 with successive Subsidy lists for three East Anglian hundreds. This evidence suggests that under-enumeration was only partly responsible for differences in the composition of successive listings, a high rate of turnover of population, principally by migration but also through maturation and mortality, being at least as important. From a critical examination of the listings an estimate of the population of Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex is derived and from this a revised estimate of the population of the whole country is obtained of a little over 1·8 millions. A range of alternative estimates is also derived, according to different assumptions of the proportion of adult males in the total population and of the proportion of the total population of England residing in East Anglia. Finally, implications of this revised estimate for late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century population trends are outlined.     

Going Against the Grain: Why Do Canada and the United States Market Wheat So Differently?

At the turn of the twentieth century, private grain exchanges settled the daily prices for North American wheat. By the end of the Second World War, the Canadian and US governments had intervened significantly in these markets. The Canadian government required farmers in its western provinces to deliver their product to the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB), a single-selling-desk agency that, by then, had supplanted private wheat marketing in western Canada. Meanwhile, the United States government subsidized farm incomes with domestic-use taxes and import tariffs, but otherwise preserved private wheat marketing. In this article, I demonstrate that these disparate agricultural policies were broadly defined by immutable economic realities imposed on each country by global wheat-trade patterns and triggered by unprecedentedly severe agricultural crises. That is, amidst the precipitous fall in wheat prices in the early 1930s, each government crafted farm-support policies that reflected its domestic-consumption share of wheat production and the importance of wheat to its overall economy.     

Next generation sequencing of DNA in 3300-year-old charred cereal grains

We investigated whether ‘next generation’ methods can be used to sequence ancient DNA molecules in charred cereal grains. We prepared a DNA extract from a mixed sample of barley, einkorn, emmer and broomcorn millet, taken from a 3300-year-old assemblage of charred cereal grains from Assiros Toumba, Greece. Using the SOLiD 5500 system, we obtained 21,112,844 unique sequence reads. Of these, 178,779 had a 75% or greater nucleotide sequence similarity with one or more entries in the full nucleotide sequence database; 496 of these matches were to previously reported sequences from barley, einkorn, emmer, broomcorn millet or related species such as hexaploid wheat. The unique reads were also compared with a database comprising only wheat sequences. This analysis identified 1658 charred grain sequences that had 90% or greater similarity with segments of the wheat genome. The presence of barley, wheat and millet sequences in the next generation dataset confirms the presence of ancient DNA in this charred grain assemblage. Enrichment of extracts by hybridization capture or equivalent methods is likely to enable sequences to be obtained for entire genes and other genomic regions of interest.     

SPATIAL ADJUSTMENTS IN GRAIN PRODUCTION IN LATE TSARIST RUSSIA

The late nineteenth century world grain market expanded as prices declined and trade increased. As competition increased, Russian producers adapted to market conditions. Russian grain output increased, first by the extension of arable southward and eastward and later as a result of land reform. Analysis of grain output data using information statistics demonstrated dispersed patterns of production from 1885 to 1909. Among individual grain types, rye and oats displayed dispersed output patterns, while wheat and barley output became more concentrated. Changes in these patterns are evidence of adaptation to world market conditions and changes in Russia's socioeconomic system.     

Land and society in early Canada and South Africa

The rural societies of early Canada and South Africa overwhelmingly comprised independent families on their own land and, in comparison with their European antecedents, were strikingly egalitarian and homogeneous. The transformation and simplification of European society in early Canada and South Africa was not the result of fragmentation—the isolation of particular elements of the European whole in remote new settings. Rather, these two colonial societies were common products of the introduction of European assumptions about family and land into settings where land was cheap and markets for farm produce were poor. Taken together these factors are sufficient to explain the general character of rural society in early Canada and most of early South Africa.     

20世纪60年代中加小麦贸易对中国的重要意义

1960年中国首次从加拿大进口粮食度荒,并由此改变此前的粮食自给自足现状。中 加小麦贸易不仅可以巩固粮食安全、促进农业改革,也可使中国重返加拿大与西方市场,使外贸渠 道多样化,同时还促进了中加建交、打破美国的封锁孤立政策。     

Does size matter: the role and significance of cereal grains in the Indus civilization

Cereal grains play a pivotal role in the rise and character of the Indus civilization. Archaeologists have traditionally focused their attention on the large-grained crops of wheat and barley while often minimizing the importance of the smaller-grained millets. Both environmental and cultural variables influence crop selection in the past as well as today. This paper explores the role and significance of cereal grain size during the evolution of the Indus civilization.     

民国时期江汉平原的粮食市场

粮食贸易在民国时期江汉平原的农村经济中占有重要地位,粮商及粮商组织、粮食加工和运输、粮食价格、粮食集散和粮食存储等几个方面反映了民国时期江汉平原的粮食市场的基本情况。粮食贸易将大量的基层市场、少量中间市场和几个中心市场联系在一起,粮食价格的趋同性表明这个地区当时存在着完整的粮食贸易体系,但相关市场特征又表明这个市场是不完善的。     

A sugar-boiling house at Galways: An Irish sugar plantation in Montserrat,West Indies

Abstract

The former village of Cowlam lies on the Chalk Wolds of the old East Riding of Yorkshire at SE/965657. When the village earthworks were threatened with destruction in the early 1970s, the late T.C.M. Brewster carried out a series of rescue excavations for the East Riding Archaeological Research Committee. He examined the remains of four structures within the ‘courtyard farm’ complex of one croft. His excavations demonstrated that this courtyard farm represented the amalgamation of two earlier croft units, probably at some time towards the end of the medieval period.

Three of these four structures had ground plans of typical ‘longhouse’ form, with dwarf chalk footing walls and opposed central doorways. Their similarity of form raised problems of their respective functions and the changing role of buildings within the complex. The wide range of artefact material recovered from the vicinity of these buildings provided additional evidence for their use.

The pottery demonstrated that this courtyard farm had remained in occupation until the later 17th century, a date which correlated with the documentary evidence for the desertion of the village. Cowlam is only one of a number of Wold villages which were abandoned in the post-medieval period.     

Local knowledge is required: a rhythmanalytical approach to the late Mesolithic and early Neolithic of the East Anglian Fenland, UK

This is a paper about blurring the boundaries between people, land and water in the past and of appreciating the importance of the wider environment in our accounts of prehistory. Maritime approaches to time/space are shown to offer new ways of looking at how people engage with the world around them. Informed by these approaches, and building on Lefebvre’s concepts of lived space and rhythm, current tensions within archaeology between cartesian and phenomenological approaches to the past will be shown to be unconstructive. These issues are all addressed in relation the late Mesolithic and early Neolithic of the East Anglian Fenland. Here a rhythmical, maritime approach will be shown to offer us a subtly different view of life during this period.     

Price Dynamics in the International Wheat Market: Modeling with Error Correction and Directed Acyclic Graphs

In this paper we examine dynamic relationships among wheat prices from five countries for the years 1981–1999. Error correction models and directed acyclic graphs are employed with observational data to sort–out the dynamic causal relationships among prices from major wheat producing regions: Canada, the European Union, Argentina, Australia, and the United States. An ambiguity related to the cyclic or acyclic flow of information between Canada and Australia is uncovered. We condition our analysis on the assumption that information flow is acyclic. The empirical results show that Canada and the U.S. are leaders in the pricing of wheat in these markets. The U.S. has a significant effect on three markets excluding Canada.     

Two Corn Belt Farms

Case studies of two farms in eastern Iowa illustrate changes in the Corn Belt since World War II. The Hoffman farm was a classic example of a traditional operation that used a three-year rotation of corn, oats and leguminous hay on 160 acres of land. These crops were used to fatten feeder cattle from western range areas and hogs that were farrowed on the farm. This farm operation did not take advantage of opportunities to expand, and it has been sold because it is too small for a successful modern family farm. The Mather farm has been operated by members ol the same family lor five generations. Anders Mather was a superb cattleman who raised crops to fatten range cattle and hogs, but his grandson, Kenneth, has eliminated the livestock operation and concentrates on producing corn and soybeans for sale as cash crops. He has enlarged the farm to more than a thousand acres by buying and renting land. It is an excellent example of a contemporary Corn Belt family farm.     

Baselines for δ15N values of cereals retrieved from archaeological excavations

This paper describes an experiment to provide baselines for the δ¹⁵N values of prehistoric cereals. Emmer wheat and barley were grown in tubs filled with two different substrates and placed in a cage to protect them from birds and cats. The experiment lasted three years. Values obtained in this way may serve in cases where no experimental farms of long standing with unmanured fields can provide them. The results are in line with the values obtained at such farms, as well as with values presented for ethnographic cases in the literature.     

Early Processed Triticeae Food Remains in The Yanghai Tombs,Xinjiang, China

Visible food remains can provide evidence regarding ancient food processing, the spread of cereals and cultural communication. Some desiccated food remains were discovered in the Yanghai Tombs, Turpan district, in Xinjiang, China (2600–2900 bp ). These food remains were analysed by Fourier transform infrared (FT–IR) spectroscopy combined with plant microfossils, including starch grains and cross cells of pericarp from the cereal bran fragments. The results showed that these food remains were cooked dough food made from wheat (Triticum aestivum) and barley (Hordeum spp.). The cross‐sections of these remains look very dense, not porous under a microscope, which suggests that no fermentation had happened, so these foodstuffs may be some kind of flatbread. Although wheat and barley had been introduced into China by at least the third millennium bc , these remains are still the earliest known direct evidence that wheat and barley were ground into flour and then processed as foodstuffs in north‐western China.     

Angli and Saxones in Æthelweard's Chronicle

The late tenth‐century Chronicle ascribed to Ealdorman Æthelweard frequently uses the word Angli in contexts where other writers employ Saxones. This has generally been attributed to a supposed project to cultivate English unity by privileging ‘Anglian’ terminology. The present article challenges this interpretation by highlighting Æthelweard's use of ‘Saxon’ vocabulary at key points in the text. Æthelweard's use of the words Angli and Saxones is best explained by the fact that he was writing for a continental Saxon reader, and his Chronicle strengthens the case for doubting that there was any coherent scheme to promote Anglian vocabulary.     

DESSICATION AND DESTRUCTION: THE IMMEDIATE EFFECTS OF DE-WATERING AT ETTON, CAMBRIDGESHIRE

This paper presents the first results of a long-term project to monitor changes in ground water conditions in parts of the East Anglian Fenland. So far the project has been concerned with two sites immediately north of Peterborough, at Borough Fen and Etton. The Borough Fen data are still being assessed, but Etton has provided results which warrant prompt publication.
The water levels were monitored in a series of boreholes across the Etton Neolithic enclosure for a period of two years (1982–4), to study the effects of the variation in the local groundwater table on the waterlogged contents of the enclosure ditch.
The first part of the paper (CF) assesses the results of this programme. The ambient water table remained at or above the level of the primary and lower secondary deposits in the ditch, thus accounting for the excellent preservation of botanical remains. Within one month of the adjacent quarry pumps being turned on the water table had fallen by up to one metre below the lowest archaeological deposits, and has not recovered since, to the almost immediate detriment of the botanical record.
The second part of the paper (MT) discusses the observed variation in the preservation of wood in particular, and describes the effects of de-watering on the deposits of wood in the enclosure ditch.     

Azerbaijan: Territorial Issues and Internal Challenges in Mid-2001

This paper examines the relationship between size of land holding and family income, based on a recent survey of rural households in Poland. In general, the results indicate a positive relationship between income and size of land holdings, suggesting that successful Polish farmers are expanding their farm holdings through land market transactions. Constraints to efficient functioning of these land markets in Poland are investigated as well, which include high government-determined land transaction costs, complex registration procedures, poor access to mortgage facilities, and a bias against larger farms built into the unemployment benefits system. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O18, Q15, Q24. 5 figures, 12 tables, 10 references.     

Imaginary Worlds,Real Stories

St Edmund, King and Martyr survived the Reformation as a hero and emblem of East Anglian regional identity. This article traces the development of the post-Reformation Edmund in ‘popular’ sources, including his continuing presence in the landscape and the influence of the nineteenth-century ‘cult of commemoration’ on perceptions of the saint.     

Preliminary report on the archaeobotanical investigations at Tell Abraq with special attention to chaff impressions in mud brick

Examination of impressions from chaff-tempered mud brick proved rewarding, given the poor preservation of carbonised seed and grain material at Tell Abraq. Individual chaff elements were found to be recognisable from the impressions and it was shown that naked wheat and barley chaff were used as a tempering medium. Charcoal samples indicate that two species of mangrove were present, one of which is no longer found in the area. Tamarisk and Ziziphus were also present. Date charcoal was common. This study remains preliminary, and further sampling and analyses have been planned for the future.