Archive of 'Recent Discoveries and Results'

2000

• As the Sumerian proverb puts it, "Food: that's the thing! Drink: that's the thing!" From bread and beer to wine and cheese, the people of the ancient Near East and North Africa developed a rich cuisine based on a set of crops and livestock domesticated in southwest Asia. Sophisticated technologies of food preservation transformed grapes into wine, milk into cheese, and many other foods into storable goods. Without that consistent food supply dependent on stored resources, the early civilizations could not have arisen. (Read all about it in "The Beginnings of Agriculture: The Ancient Near East and North Africa," original, accurate title "Food and Drink in the Ancient Near East and North Africa," by N.F. Miller and W. Wetterstrom, in The Cambridge World History of Food.)

• Gold pendants associated with the grave of Puabi in the Royal Tombs at Ur, previously identified as wheat and a bush, in fact represent flowering and fruiting branches of the male and female date palm. Furthermore, the "pomegranate"-like fruit is probably apple ("Plant Forms in Jewelry from the Royal Cemetery at Ur," Iraq 62: 149-155 and downloadable pdf: Date Sex in Mesopotamia!, in Expedition 41(1): 29-30). [Link to "popular version"].

1999

• Biodiversity preservation and archaeological conservation are coming together as we develop methods of reducing soil erosion on the Midas Mound (c. 700 B.C., Gordion, Turkey) by getting native plants to thrive on the steep slopes of this 53-m high monument ("Erosion, Biodiversity, and Archaeology: Preserving the Midas Tumulus at Gordion/Erozyon, Bioçeşitlilik ve Arkeoloji Gordion'daki Midas Höyüğü'nün Korunması," in Arkeoloji ve Sanat 93: 12-17+plate). See also "Archaeobotanists Preserve Midas's Wealth," Anthropology Newsletter 39 (4): 14-15 (1998); for updated articles, see: "Plants and Mudbrick: Preserving the Midas Tumulus at Gordion, Turkey," by N.F. Miller and K. Bluemel (Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites 3:225-237) and "Plants in the Service of Archaeological Preservation", by N.F. Miller ( Expedition 42(1): 30-36).

• Plausible evidence for irrigation of cereal crops in Central Asia occurs at Chalcolithic Anau, Turkmenistan, whose assemblage includes very plump examples of 6-row barley and bread wheat. Fruit and nuts do not seem to be of any significance until the Bronze Age--with grape at Anau South and Gonur (Turkmenistan) and Djarkutan (Uzbekistan) and Pistacia vera, the pistachio of commerce, at Djarkutan. ("Agricultural Development in Western Central Asia in the Chalcolithic and Bronze Ages." Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 8: 13-19.
  

• Between the Late Bronze Age and the Medieval period, the arboreal vegetation available to the people of Gordion changed. Although they always had access to woodland types, there was a gradual increase in the use of trees of secondary forest (e.g., hawthorn) and riparian types (e.g., willow/poplar). (Seeds, Charcoal and Archaeological Context: Interpreting Ancient Environment and Patterns of Land Use. TÜBA-AR 2: 15-27.

1997

• During the glacial period, post-glacial warming and the Younger Dryas, vegetation does not seem to have been affected by human activities to any appreciable extent. Forest expansion at the beginning of the Holocene occurred independently of human agency, though early Neolithic farmers were able to take advantage of improved climatic conditions. Absence of macrobotanical remains precludes discussion of possible drought from 6000 to 5500 bc. By farming, herding, and fuel-cutting, human populations began to have an impact on the landscape at different different times and places. Deleterious effects of these activities became evident in the Tigris-Euphrates drainage during the third millennium bc based on macrobotanical evidence from archaeological sites. Even more widespread, permanent deforestation did not occur until the Iron Age. (The Macrobotanical Evidence for Vegetation in the Near East, c. 18 000/16 000 bc to 4 000 bc. Paléorient 23 (2): 197-207)

• Spatial and temporal patterning in the distribution of Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age plant remains and animal bones reflects land use practices at several sites along the Euphrates (Kurban, Hacinebi, Sweyhat). In any particular period, from north to south, the proportion of wood charcoal declines. The proportion of wild seeds to cereals increases. The proportion of barley relative to wheat increases. And, significantly, the proportion of sheep and goat relative to cattle and pig also increases. That is, toward the steppe, pastoral production is more important, animals are sent out to graze, and dung fuel is burned, and toward the forest, agriculture is more secure, animals eat more cultigens, and dung fuel is less necessary. At Kurban, pastoral production seems to have been most important when the site was an independent small settlement and also when it was part of a much larger urban system. (Farming and Herding along the Euphrates: Environmental Constraint and Cultural Choice. MASCA Research Papers in Science and Archaeology 14, pp. 123-132)

1996

• If the diverse seed assemblages of the Epipaleolithic come from gazelle dung burned as fuel, one would be hard-pressed to use the material to support the "Broad Spectrum Revolution" hypothesis for the origins of agriculture--(Seed-Eaters of the Ancient Near East: Human or Herbivore? Current Anthropology 37: 521-528, with criticism by G.C. Hillman, A.J. Legge, and P.A. Rowley-Conwy and response, CA 38: 651-660)

1995

• A plant/plant product known to Pliny as aspalathus, sometimes identfied as camelthorn, is most likely to be caper (Capparis, probably C. spinosa). (The Aspalathus Caper. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 297: 55-60)