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 and 2000 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.

Modern plant use and garbage disposal practices in an Iranian village were observed in order to provide a framework for the interpretation of plant remains from ancient Malyan, a third millennium B.C. urban center in southern Iran. The ethnoarchaeological model suggested that many carbonized seeds originate in dung cake fuel. By applying this proposition to the archaeobotanical material from Malyan, it was possible to corroborate the evidence provided by the independent charcoal analysis for progressive deforestation during the third millennium.

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a b s t r a c tA pollen diagram was prepared from Lake Almalou, a volcanic crater wetland located on the eastern flanks of the Sahand Volcanic Complex in NW Iran. The core provides a 3700-year record of human activity and environmental change in an upland region. We attempt to relate vegetation changes to both climatic change and historical events. Variations of anthropogenic pollen indicators suggest several phases of intensified human activities. Two strongly expressed agricultural phases are dated at about 2450-2220 cal BP (Achaemenid Empire) and 230-30 cal BP (collapse of Safavid Dynasty to the modern period). Historical rather than climatic events appear to be the main controlling factors for upland land-use dynamics. Fruticulture has been practiced in the region at least since the Iron Age, reaching its maximum importance 1500-1250 cal BP during the reign of Sassanid Empire; it declined by the time of Islamic conquest of Iran (651 AD). The Little Ice Age is tangibly recorded by higher lake water levels most probably due to both lower summer temperatures and higher annual precipitations. Low values of cereal-type and cultivated tree pollen during this period may indicate a change in the lifestyle from the cultivation of fields and orchards to a more nomadic life dominated by summer pasture. The modern period (1850 AD onwards) is characterized by expansion of agricultural activities to upland areas and intensified pastoralism.

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The changing character of vegetation and the effects of disturbance on vegetation are inferred from pollen, plant macrofossils, charcoal, and microlepidopteran larvel head capsules in sediment cores from Upper South Branch Pond, Maine. Following deglaciation 12 500 – 12 000 years ago, a herb–shrub tundra developed which included moss species characteristic of calcareous, mineral soils. Fire and infestation by microlepidopterans were unimportant initially but became important upon arrival of spruce, paper birch, balsam fir, white pine, and tamarack trees (ca. 10 200 – 9500 years BP). Fires were infrequent in the watershed between 7500 and 5000 years BP. The relatively stable forests of this period, dominated by hemlock and yellow birch, grew in what may have been the moistest part of the Holocene. The maximum postglacial abundance of microlepidopteran larvae is centered around the hemlock decline (ca. 4800 years BP). Subsequently, the forest was composed largely of deciduous trees and white pine. Fire incidence was greater, and fewer fossils of microlepidoptera were deposited. Lack of major disturbances between ca. 3300 and 2600 years BP coincided with increases in hemlock, tamarack, yellow birch, and arbor vitae. Increases in boreal conifers began by about 1700 years ago, suggesting cooler, and perhaps wetter, climate. An increase in microlepidoptera accompanied the recent expansion of boreal conifers.

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