Although phytolith research has come of age in archaeology and palaeoecology internationally, it has remained relatively marginalised from mainstream practice in Australasia. The region’s initial isolation from international scientific communities and uniqueness of its vegetation communities, has led to an exclusive set of challenges and interruptions in phytolith research...
Understanding the long-term interactions between people and the ecosystem in which they live is vital for informing present-day ecosystem management plans. The use of pollen data for palaeoecological reconstructions is often limited by the low taxonomic resolution of pollen, which often reduces the detail of reconstructions of human influence on past vegetation. This is true for...
Zohary and Hopf coined the term ‘founder crops’ to refer to a specific group of eight plants, namely three cereals (einkorn, emmer and barley), four legumes (lentil, pea, bitter vetch and chickpea), and a fibre/oil crop (flax), that founded early Neolithic agriculture in southwest Asia. Zohary considered these taxa as the first cultivated and domesticated species, as well as...
The paper discusses a multi-proxy archaeobotanical dataset from the published macrobotanical and microbotanical research of 19 Epipalaeolithic sites over a period of 13.5 ka (ca. 25-11.5 ka cal bp) in the southern Levant. The archaeobotanical record includes over 200 phytolith samples extracted from sediments of 11 sites, macrobotanical evidence from seeds, plant tissues and wood...
Charred remains of wild rye from five sites in the Middle Euphrates region in Syria dated to the end of the Pleistocene and the beginning of the Holocene are examined. This period spans the transition from gathering to the beginnings of cultivation. Today wild rye cannot grow in the region because temperatures and aridity are too pronounced. Wild rye grains and wild two-grained...
This paper presents a palynological analysis of sediments from Walanjiwurru 1, a rockshelter located in the Country of the Marra Aboriginal people at Limmen National Park in the Northern Territory (Australia). Analysis seeks to test rockshelter sediments as a framework for research in an environmentally difficult location, and to explore how the palaeoecological record may...
At the site of Grotta Mora Cavorso (Lazio, Italy), an unusual archaeological find, made of two coarse pottery vessels, was recovered from burial levels radiocarbon dated to 6,405–6,275 bp. These artefacts were analysed using several methods, for interpretation of the cultural practices of the earliest inhabitants in central Italy. This first molecular evidence about the potential...
This paper presents the results of an archaeobotanical analysis of plant macro-remains recovered during excavations of a rural tepe site at Qaratepe, Azerbaijan, occupied during the Sasanian and Islamic periods between the 2nd and 13th centuries ad. The material derives from a 4 year Oxford University expedition which occurred between 2015 and 2018, ‘The Archaeological...
There is a long tradition of archaeobotanical research in and around the dwelling mounds, known as terps or Wurten (among other names), along the Wadden Sea coast. The present paper presents an overview of crop plants retrieved from 1,389 samples, from a total of more than 100 sites, spanning the Iron Age to the Early Modern Period. Traditionally, the area has been more...
The Nok culture in central Nigeria, dated 1500–1 cal bc, is known for its famous terracotta sculptures. We here present a study on > 11,000 botanical macro-remains from 50 sites, including 343 samples from Nok contexts and 22 samples dating between cal ad 100 and 400, after the end of the Nok culture. With 9,220 remains, pearl millet (Cenchrus americanus (L.) Morrone, syn...
Triticum turgidum ssp. dicoccoides (wild emmer wheat) was one of the first plants that gave rise to domestic wheat forms in southwest Asia. The details of the domestication of emmer and its early dispersal routes out of southwest Asia remain elusive, especially with regard to its dispersal to the east. In this study, we combine whole genome data from a selection of specimens of...
This multi-proxy approach combines results of sedimentological, pollen and diatom studies on sediments of Lake Wonieść, Greater Poland. This enables reconstruction of the natural and anthropogenic drivers of past environmental change. Several steps of lake development are recorded, from a eutrophic to an oligotrophic stage, and with increasing human influence back to a...
The island of Cyprus has a long history of human impacts, including the introduction of more than 250 plant species. One of these introduced species is Juglans regia (walnut), which is considered a naturalised non-native (introduced in last 500 years). Here we report the earliest occurrence of Juglans regia pollen grains from a sedimentary deposit on Cyprus. The pollen recovered...
This paper presents new evidence for the harvesting of edible plant roots and tubers at Northton, a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer site on Harris, in the Western Isles of Scotland, in the north-west corner of Europe. The excavations uncovered abundant root tuber remains of Ficaria verna Huds. (lesser celandine), an excellent high energy and carbohydrate-rich food source, and produced...
Throughout northern Africa, evidence for an intensification of wild grass gathering is reflected in Holocene archaeological contexts. However, both the recovery of macrobotanical assemblages and the specificity of their taxonomic classification are heavily influenced by food processing and post-depositional conditions. In contrast, inflorescence phytoliths provide high levels of...
Continuation of archaeobotanical and palaeoecological research on three semi-artificial lake islands, Nowy Dworek, Chycina and Lubniewice, has provided new information on the history, development and use of grasslands in Ziemia Lubuska (Lubusz land) in western Poland during the early Middle Ages. Pollen analysis reveals that the reduction in woodland and opening up of the...
Later prehistoric woodland decline over most parts of Scotland is widely regarded as having been anthropogenic, via a range of mechanisms, to create farmland. Climatic causes are seen only to have driven the rapid expansion and then terminal decline of Pinus sylvestris around 2000 cal BC. Here we report radiocarbon dated analyses of pollen, microscopic charcoal, coprophilous...
In this paper, we present the results of the plant macrofossil analyses from the site of Tel Lachish, Israel with focus on the botanical assemblage of the Middle and Late Bronze Age layers collected in two different areas of the tell: Area S, a trench on the western edge of the site, whose samples belong to Late Bronze Age deposits, and Area P, the palace area on the top of the...