On the Origins and Dissemination of Domesticated Sorghum and Pearl Millet across Africa and into India: a View from the Butana Group of the Far Eastern Sahel

Four decades have passed since Harlan and Stemler (1976) proposed the eastern Sahelian zone as the most likely center of Sorghum bicolor domestication. Recently, new data on seed impressions on Butana Group pottery, from the fourth millennium BC in the southern Atbai region of the far eastern Sahelian Belt in Africa, show evidence for cultivation activities of sorghum displaying some domestication traits. Pennisetum glaucum may have been undergoing domestication shortly thereafter in the western Sahel, as finds of fully domesticated pearl millet are present in southeastern Mali by the second half of the third millennium BC, and present in eastern Sudan by the early second millennium BC. The dispersal of the latter to India took less than 1000 years according to present data. Here, we review the middle Holocene Sudanese archaeological data for the first time, to situate the origins and spread of these two native summer rainfall cereals in what is proposed to be their eastern Sahelian Sudan gateway to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean trade.     

Local diversity in settlement,demography and subsistence across the southern Indian Neolithic-Iron Age transition: site growth and abandonment at Sanganakallu-Kupgal

The Southern Indian Neolithic-Iron Age transition demonstrates considerable regional variability in settlement location, density, and size. While researchers have shown that the region around the Tungabhadra and Krishna River basins displays significant subsistence and demographic continuity, and intensification, from the Neolithic into the Iron Age ca. 1200 cal. BC, archaeological and chronometric records in the Sanganakallu region point to hilltop village expansion during the Late Neolithic and ‘Megalithic’ transition period (ca. 1400–1200 cal. BC) prior to apparent abandonment ca. 1200 cal. BC, with little evidence for the introduction of iron technology into the region. We suggest that the difference in these settlement histories is a result of differential access to stable water resources during a period of weakening and fluctuating monsoon across a generally arid landscape. Here, we describe well-dated, integrated chronological, archaeobotanical, archaeozoological and archaeological survey datasets from the Sanganakallu-Kupgal site complex that together demonstrate an intensification of settlement, subsistence and craft production on local hilltops prior to almost complete abandonment ca. 1200 cal. BC. Although the southern Deccan region as a whole may have witnessed demographic increase, as well as subsistence and cultural continuity, at this time, this broader pattern of continuity and resilience is punctuated by local examples of abandonment and mobility driven by an increasing practical and political concern with water.     

Archaeobotanical and GIS-based approaches to prehistoric agriculture in the upper Ying valley,Henan, China

Archaeobotanical survey has sampled a series of late Neolithic to early Bronze Age settlements in the upper Ying valley (part of the central plain of China) and provided useful data for understanding prehistoric arable ecology and farming during a period of increasing local social complexity. A combination of the modelling functions offered by Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the data reduction possibilities offered by Principal Component Analysis (PCA) allow us to explore possible relationships between local arable ecology, crop-processing strategies and the natural environment. The results should be treated cautiously given the size of the analytical sample but suggest that differences in the natural environment around each site may explain varying patterns of wild food collection, while social and cultural factors may better explain variation in farming practice and crop-processing at different sites.     

Shell Middens, Ships and Seeds: Exploring Coastal Subsistence, Maritime Trade and the Dispersal of Domesticates in and Around the Ancient Arabian Peninsula

The Arabian Peninsula occupies a critical position at the intersect of several major Old World landmasses. Inland aridity and a major coastal perimeter have long made maritime activities critical to Arabia’s cultural trajectory. A wealth of recent studies, not previously synthesised, suggest not only that the peninsular littoral offered a rich resource base for thousands of years of human occupation in the region, but also that Arabia witnessed some of the world’s earliest seafaring and maritime exchange activities, and played a role in Bronze Age maritime trade that has often been underestimated. Maritime activities were closely linked to developments in agriculture, which not only fuelled trade and exchange, but were also impacted on by the dispersal of domesticates along early maritime corridors. While regional specialisation has to some degree prevented consideration of the maritime prehistory of the peninsula as a whole, it is clear that there are interesting parallels, as well as important differences, between cultural trajectories in different parts of the peninsula.     

East Africa and Madagascar in the Indian Ocean world

The Indian Ocean has long been a forum for contact, trade and the transfer of goods, technologies and ideas between geographically distant groups of people. Another, less studied, outcome of expanding maritime connectivity in the region is the translocation of a range of species of plants and animals, both domestic and wild. A significant number of these translocations can now be seen to involve Africa, either providing or receiving species, suggesting that Africa’s role in the emergence of an increasingly connected Indian Ocean world deserves more systematic consideration. While the earliest international contacts with the East African coast remain poorly understood, in part due to a paucity of archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological studies, some evidence for early African coastal activity is provided by the discovery of early hunter-gatherer sites on offshore islands, and, possibly, by the translocation of wild animals among these islands, and between them and the mainland. From the seventh century, however, clear evidence for participation in the Indian Ocean world emerges, in the form of a range of introduced species, including commensal and domestic animals, and agricultural crops. New genetic studies demonstrate that the flow of species to the coast is complex, with more than one source frequently indicated. The East African coast and Madagascar appear to have been significant centres of genetic admixture, drawing upon Southeast Asian, South Asian and Middle Eastern genetic varieties, and sometimes yielding unique hybrid species. The biological patterns reflect a deeply networked trade and contact situation, and support East Africa’s key role in the events and transformations of the early Indian Ocean world.     

Evidence of an Eleventh-Century AD Cola Nitida Trade into the Middle Niger Region

Kola nut (Cola cf. nitida) and Safou fruit (Dacryodes edulis) remains have been discovered in eleventh- to fourteenth-century archaeological contexts at Togu Missiri near Ségou in Mali. These remains are evidence of early trade in perishable foodstuffs from the West African forest zone into the Middle Niger region. On the basis of these finds, this paper argues that long-distance trade links were well established by the end of the first millennium AD. It thereby supports the hypothesis that dates the inception of trade between the West African forest zone and the savanna regions to the first millennium AD. The circumstances of the find are discussed, as are the implications for our understanding of the wider exchange network based on the Niger River system in the late first and early second millennium CE.

     

Archaeogenetic study of prehistoric rice remains from Thailand and India: evidence of early <Emphasis Type="Italic">japonica</Emphasis> in South and Southeast Asia

We report a successful extraction and sequencing of ancient DNA from carbonized rice grains (Oryza sativa) from six archaeological sites, including two from India and four from Thailand, ranging in age from ca. 2500 to 1500 BP. In total, 221 archaeological grains were processed by PCR amplification and primary-targeted fragments were sequenced for comparison with modern sequences generated from 112 modern rice populations, including crop and wild varieties. Our results include the genetic sequences from both the chloroplast and the nuclear genomes, based on four markers from the chloroplast and six from the nuclear genome. These markers allow differentiation of indica rice from japonica rice, the two major subspecies of Asian rice (O. sativa) considered to have separate geographical origins. One nuclear marker differentiates tropical and temperate forms of subspecies japonica. Other markers relate to phenotypic variation selected for under domestication, such as non-shattering, grain stickiness (waxy starch) and pericarp colour. Recovery and identification of sequences from nuclear markers was generally poor, whereas recovery of chloroplast sequences was successful, with at least one of four markers recovered in 61 % of archaeological grains. This allowed for successful differentiation of indica or japonica subspecies variety, with japonica identified in all the Thai material and a mixture of indica and japonica chloroplasts in the two Indian assemblages. Rice subspecies was also assessed through conventional archaeobotanical methods relying on grain metrics, based on measurements from 13 modern populations and 499 archaeological grains. Grain metrics also suggest a predominance of japonica-type grains in the Southeast Asian sites and a mixture of japonica and indica in the Indian sites with indica in the minority. The similar results of grain metrics and ancient DNA (aDNA) affirm that grain measurements have some degree of reliability in rice subspecies identification. The study also highlights the great potential of ancient DNA recovery from archaeological rice. The data generated in the present study adds support to the model of rice evolution that includes hybridization between japonica and proto-indica.     

Lithic technology and social transformations in the South Indian Neolithic: The evidence from Sanganakallu–Kupgal

Here we examine patterns in stone tool technology among Mesolithic, Neolithic and Iron Age localities in the Sanganakallu–Kupgal site complex, Bellary District, Karnataka, South India. Statistical tests are used to compare proportions of raw materials and artefact types, and to compare central tendencies in metric variables taken on flakes and tools. Lithic-related findings support the inference of at least two distinct technological and economic groups at Sanganakallu–Kupgal, a microlith-focused foraging society on the one hand, and on the other, an agricultural society whose lithic technologies centred upon the production of pressure bladelets and dolerite edge-ground axes. Evidence for continuity in lithic technological processes through time may reflect indigenous processes of development, and a degree of continuity from the Mesolithic through to the Neolithic period. Lithic production appears to have become a specialised and spatially segregated activity by the terminal Neolithic and early Iron Age, supporting suggestions for the emergence of an increasingly complex economy and political hierarchy.