The practices of data sharing, data citation and data reuse are all crucial aspects of the reproducibility of archaeological research. This article builds on the small number of studies reviewing data sharing and citation practices in archaeology, focussing on the data-rich sub-discipline of archaeobotany. Archaeobotany is a sub-discipline built on the time-intensive collection of data on archaeological plant remains, in order to investigate crop choice, crop husbandry, diet, vegetation and a wide range of other past human-plant relationships. Within archaeobotany, the level and form of data sharing is currently unknown.

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Following the Roman conquest, agricultural production in Britain faced increasing demand from large urban and military populations. While it has long been thought that this necessitated an increase in agricultural production, direct archaeological evidence for changes in cultivation practices has been scarce. Using a model that conceptualises cereal farming strategies in terms of intensive or extensive practices, this paper is the first study to address this question using carbon and nitrogen stable isotope data of crop remains. We report δ 15 N and δ 13 C values from 41 samples of spelt, emmer and barley from Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman Stanwick (Northants., UK), in order to assess the intensiveness of arable farming and investigate shifts in cultivation practices in prehistoric and Roman Britain. The results demonstrate a decline in δ 15 N in the Roman period, suggesting that farming practices moved to lower levels of manuring and, by implication, became more extensive. δ 13 C values are comparable in all periods, supporting the suggestion that changes observed in human stable isotope data between the Iron Age and Roman period are best explained by dietary change rather than a shift towards higher δ 13 C values in plants at the base of the food chain.