Opium poppy (Papaver somniferum L. subsp. somniferum) was likely domesticated in the Western Mediterranean, where its putative wild ancestor is indigenous, and then spread to central and northern Europe. While opium poppy seeds are regularly identified in archaeobotanical studies, the absence of morphological criteria to distinguish the seeds of wild and domestic forms prevents the documentation of their respective historical and geographical occurrences and of the process of opium domestication as a whole. To fill this gap and better understand the status of this crop in the Neolithic, we combined seed outline analyses, namely elliptic Fourier transforms, with other morphometric descriptors to describe and identify Papaver setigerum, Papaver somniferum and other Papaver taxa. The combination of all measured parameters gives the most precise predictions for the identification of all seven taxa. We finally provide a case study on a Neolithic assemblage from a pile-dwelling site in Switzerland (Zurich-Parkhaus Opéra, ca. 3170 BC). Our results indicate the presence of mixed populations of domestic and wild seeds belonging to the P. somniferum group, suggesting that the plant was already in the process of domestication at the end of 4th millennium BC. Altogether, these results pave the way to understand the geography and history of the poppy domestication and its spread into Europe.
In the 12,000 years preceding the Industrial Revolution, human activities led to significant changes in land cover, plant and animal distributions, surface hydrology, and biochemical cycles. Earth system models suggest that this anthropogenic land cover change influenced regional and global climate. However, the representation of past land use in earth system models is currently oversimplified. As a result, there are large uncertainties in the current understanding of the past and current state of the earth system. In order to improve representation of the variety and scale of impacts that past land use had on the earth system, a global effort is underway to aggregate and synthesize archaeological and historical evidence of land use systems. Here we present a simple, hierarchical classification of land use systems designed to be used with archaeological and historical data at a global scale and a schema of codes that identify land use practices common to a range of systems, both implemented in a geospatial database. The classification scheme and database resulted from an extensive process of consultation with researchers worldwide. Our scheme is designed to deliver consistent, empirically robust data for the improvement of land use models, while simultaneously allowing for a comparative, detailed mapping of land use relevant to the needs of historical scholars. To illustrate the benefits of the classification scheme and methods for mapping historical land use, we apply it to Mesopotamia and Arabia at 6 kya (c. 4000 BCE). The scheme will be used to describe land use by the Past Global Changes (PAGES) LandCover6k working group, an international project comprised of archaeologists, historians, geographers, paleoecologists, and modelers. Beyond this, the scheme has a wide utility for creating a common language between research and policy communities, linking archaeologists with climate modelers, biodiversity conservation workers and initiatives.
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