Archive of 'Recent Discoveries and Results'

2003

• Archaeological survey and excavation suggest that during much of the third millennium (between the Banesh [Proto-Elamite] and Kaftari [Elamite] periods), permanent settlements virtually disappeared in Fars province, Iran. Analysis of pottery and stratigraphy at Malyan, one of the few sites with both Banesh and Kaftari period deposits, suggests that the site may have been occupied by a small permanent population who had a ceramic tradition that eventually evolved into the mature Kaftari style; i.e., the Malyan Kaftari occupation is just a continuation, perhaps with some new influences, of the earlier Banesh tradition. ("The Banesh-Kaftari Interface. The View from Operation H5, Malyan." (corrected version, published 2004, 42:77-89)

• The people who lived at Anau North ('Chalcolithic deposits, fifth and fourth millennia BC) settled in a landscape dominated by tugai vegetation (lots of Tamarix). Fields were probably cleared along the stream (a precursor of the Anau Su), perhaps interspersed with tugai thickets, and herds grazed on nearby steppe. The two main crops, six-row barley (Hordeum vulgare supsp. vulgare) and bread wheat (Triticum aestivum), almost undoubtedly were irrigated, perhaps by simple gravity flow. Human activities had only a negligible impact on the vegetation in the period considered here. Over time, however, fields may have expanded at the expense of pasture and tugai in the immediate vicinity of the settlement. ("The Use of Plants at Anau North." In A Central Asian Village at the Dawn of Civilization, Excavations at Anau, Turkmenistan, by F. Hiebert, pp. 127-138, Appendix C (pp. 201-215). University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia. [Download pdf]

2001 and 2002

• The gradual integration of animals into a mixed farming system can be traced in the Euphrates valley at the sites of Cafer, Gritille, and Abu Hureyra. During the PPNB (era of early farming), where people used pulses most, they decline over the period when animal domestication was becoming established. This makes some sense on nutritional grounds, since regardless of peoples' conscious knowledge, a steady supply of meat or milk satisfies the same human protein needs as the consumption of pulses together with cereals. As people integrated agricultural and pastoral production during the PPNB, they developed a subsistence system that, through its productivity and stability, allowed for large permanent settlements and promoted population expansion into zones previously occupied solely by foragers. (For details see "Down the Garden Path: How Plant and Animal Husbandry Came Together in the Ancient Near East." Down the Garden Path," Near Eastern Archaeology 64(1-2): 134-137, and "Tracing the Development of the Agropastoral Economy in Southeastern Anatolia and Northern Syria," in The Dawn of Farming in the Near East, 2002 [Download pdf])

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 " Date Sex in Mesopotamia!." Expedition 42(1): 30-36. And check out the website, too!

1999

• Biodiversity preservation and archaeological conservation are coming together as we develop methods of reducing soil erosion on the Midas Mound (c. 800 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." 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. [Download pdf])
  

• 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. [Download pdf]

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 anyparticular 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.)