Recent Discoveries and Results (Highlights)

2020

• The statuettes commonly referred to as Ram Caught in a Thicket (2500 BC) may well be associated with what is known from later texts (2nd millennium BC) as the (daily) determining-of-the-fates ritual that occurred at sunrise. Symbolic elements (tree, rosette, leaf, possible mountain), and motifs (quadruped facing a tree) occur in other media-glyptic, musical instruments-and their meaning informs the unique combination of elements found in these two statuettes. It is proposed that the statuettes are offering stands. The composition as a whole represents a sacred landscape rather than a charming genre scene. It is likely that the statuettes were associated with the daily ritual of the determining of the fates, which would push the later attestations of that ritual and the cosmological view behind it back to the mid-third millennium BC. See Miller, Jones, Zettler and Pittman (2020), Journal of Near Eastern Studies 20: 27-47) https://doi.org/10.1163/15692124-12341311

2019

• A review of Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States, by James C. Scott, appeared in a section of the Journal of Peasant Studies devoted to that volume. The critique takes issue with the interpretation or accuracy of cited evidence and the use of anachronistic and a-geographical analogy. For example, the author treats the Bronze and Iron Ages (third-first millennia BC) as a single static period. In attempting to overthrow the "standard civilizational narrative" of inexorable human progress, Scott unwittingly falls back on the old-fashioned and long-discredited "Fall of Man" narrative. See "Paradise Lost," Journal of Peasant Studies 46: 872-877.

• Archaeobotanical perspectives inform site conservation and presentation at Gordion, Turkey. The historical landscape there includes about 240 royal burial mounds and the archaeological site of Gordion. The tumuli and the historical landscape in which they sit are threatened by agricultural development and suburbanization. The excavated part of the site is exposed to the elements. Protection of the largest tumulus against uncontrolled grazing has reduced erosion and led to biodiversity preservation. Plant management practices coordinated with the architectural conservation team are under development. On stone structures, soft caps are planted with Poa bulbosa and a selective weeding programme aims at keeping deep-rooted plants from destroying the stonework. Education and outreach for local people and tourists include a native plant garden and self-guided walking tours. See " Historic landscape and site preservation at Gordion, Turkey: an archaeobotanist's perspective". For more about my Gordion nature and site conservation work and educational activities, see the Gordion page of my website.

2018

• Palustrine carbonates are frequently found with active and dried karstic springs in the foothills of the mountains bordering the Persepolis Basin, southwest Iran. [This is the region known to prehistorians as the Kur River Basin, location of Tal-i Malyan, ancient Anshan]. The resulting the karstic spring-fed carbonate wetlands wetlands share similarities with anastomosing river systems in aerial view and may be termed "anastomosing wetlands" or "anastomosing palustrine environments." As a main source of fresh water hosting a rich biodiversity, karstic spring wetlands attract human communities, whose impact is visible in the archaeological material imbedded in the wetland stratigraphy. Fresh water availability, through these spring wetlands, partly explains why the semiarid Persepolis region was selected by successive civilizations, from Elamites to Persians until early Islamic entities, to establish regional centres throughout the period from the third millennium B.C. to the first millennium A.D. Only a few of these ecosystems have survived the intensive human activities of recent decades. See Djamali et al., "Karstic spring wetlands of the Persepolis Basin, southwest Iran:unique sediment archives of Holocene environmental change and human impacts." [Available online]

2017

• In contrast to the common view that the first millennium BC in Central Asia was a time of increased mobility and reliance on animal husbandry, and the appearance of the Scythians, this paper presents evidence for farming, including the introduction of new crops, at four archaeological sites across the Talgar alluvial fan of southeastern Kazakhstan. People in this region cultivated free-threshing wheat and hulled barley (long-season grain crops), as well as broomcorn and foxtail millet. There is also evidence for viticulture. These data warrant a reevaluation of the 'nomad'-based model for Iron Age economy in this region. See Spengler et al., 2017, "Linking agriculture and exchange to social developments of the Central Asian Iron Age." Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 48: 295-308.

2016

• One of the plants on the lowest register of the Warka Vase is date palm, which has implications for the entire composition. The lowest of three registers appears to represent the basis of Mesopotamian life: water, plants, and animals. Identification of the water and animals is relatively straightforward. In the absence of serious botanical study, the plants depicted are usually thought to be grain and flax. Analysis of the plant imagery in concert with that of archaic signs, botanical charactistics, and our understanding of Mesopotamian agriculture and tradition shows that the 'grain' is date palm, arguably a male offshoot. It confirms the other plant as flax. Analysis based on these plant identifications demonstrates the composition of the imagery on the Vase has a gendered and political narrative structure. (Sign and Image: Representations of Plants on the Warka Vase of Early Mesopotamia, by Miller, Jones, and Pittman, 2016. Origini 39: 53-73. See also The Ethnobiology of the Warka Vase, an illustrated presentation of many of these ideas.)

• The two East Asian millets, broomcorn (Panicum miliaceum) and foxtail millet (Setaria italica), spread across Eurasia and became important crops by the second millennium BC. The earliest indisputable archaeobotanical remains of broomcorn millet outside of East Asia identified thus far date to the end of the third millennium BC in eastern Kazakhstan. By the end of the second millennium BC, broomcorn millet cultivation had spread to the rest of Central Eurasia and to Eastern Europe. Both millets are well suited to an arid ecology where the dominant portion of the annual precipitation falls during the warm summer months. Indeed, the earliest sites with millet remains outside of East Asia are restricted to a narrow foothill ecocline between 800 and2000 m a.s.l., where summer precipitation is relatively high (about 125 mm or more, from May through October). Ethnohistorically, millets, as fast growing, warm-season crops, were commonly cultivated as a way to reduce agricultural risk and were grown as a low-investment rain-fed summer crop. In Eurasian regions with moist winters and very low summer precipitation, the prevailing agricultural regime had long depended on winter wheat (Triticum aestivum) and barley (Hordeum vulgare) cultivated with supplemental irrigation. We propose that the secondary wave of millet cultivation that spread into the summer-dry regions of southern Central Asia is associated with an intensification of productive economies in general, and specifically with the expansion of centrally organized irrigation works."Millet cultivation across Eurasia: Origins, spread, and the influence of seasonal climate," Miller, Spengler, and Frachetti, 2016. [available on-line in April 2016] [Download pdf]

2015

• Kyzyltepa, an Achaemenid site in Uzbekistan. The cultivation of summer and winter crops shows a year-round commitment to agriculture that reflects a relatively intense cultivation regime that included both risk reduction and production enhancement strategies, and millet cultivation at Kyzyltepa provided a way to extract more food from the same amount of land. This intense cultivation regime is probably a consequence of the Achaemenid domination in Central Asia, which both required and accommodated the intensification of agricultural production and expansive land use. Supplemental irrigation increases yield and stabilises it from one year to the next. Furthermore, concentrated demand for water in the spring might require a large scale irrigation system. The discovery of millets at Kyzyltepa indicates summer irrigation. Whether for food, fodder, or both, millet cultivation in this summer dry zone represents an intensification of land use as it increases production on the same amount of land. ( Agro-pastoral Strategies and Food Production on the Achaemenid Frontier in Southern Central Asia: A Case Study of Kyzyltepa (Uzbekistan), by Wu, Miller, and Crabtree, 2015.)

• An icon of ancient Mesopotamian art from the Royal Cemetery at Ur, "Puabi's Diadem," is now known to have been mistakenly constructed by Leonard Woolley. This chapter explains the research involved in creating the current configuration of the same group of "beads and baubles" as a set of seven simpler diadems. In addition, it proposes that the animal pendants reference characters and stories that are known from later texts: the bearded bull represents Utu, the stag references Enki's boat (Stag of the Abzu), the gazelle refers to Dumuzi (as A. Cohen had observed earlier), and the ram, least plausibly, might be a metaphor of Inanna's mourning for Dumuzi (she lacerates her cheeks as rams scratch the scratch the earth). Puabi's Diadem(s): The Deconstruction of a Mesopotamian Icon, by H. Pittman and N.F. Miller.