Rice is one of the most culturally valued and widely grown crops in the world today, and extensive research over the past decade has clarified much of the narrative of its domestication and early spread across East and South Asia. However, the timing and routes of its dispersal into West Asia and Europe, through which rice eventually became an important ingredient in global cuisines, has remained less clear. In this article, we discuss the piecemeal, but growing, archaeobotanical data for rice in West Asia. We also integrate written sources, linguistic data, and ethnohistoric analogies, in order to better understand the adoption of rice outside its regions of origin. The human-mediated westward spread of rice proceeded gradually, while its social standing and culinary uses repeatedly changing over time and place. Rice was present in West Asia and Europe by the tail end of the first millennium BC, but did not become a significant crop in West Asia until the past few centuries. Complementary historical, linguistic, and archaeobotanical data illustrate two separate and roughly contemporaneous routes of westward dispersal, one along the South Asian coast and the other through Silk Road trade. By better understanding the adoption of this water-demanding crop in the arid regions of West Asia, we explore an important chapter in human adaptation and agricultural decision making.
The urban center of Paykend was an exchange node just off the main corridor of the Silk Road in the Bukhara Oasis on the edge of the hyperarid Kyzyl–Kum Desert. The city was occupied from the end of 4 century B.C.E. to the mid–12 century C.E.; our study focuses on the Qarakhanid period (C.E. 999 – 1211), the last imperial phase of urban occupation at Paykend before its abandonment. In this study, we present the results of an analysis of archaeobotanical remains recovered from a multifunction rabat, which appears to have comprised a domicile, military structure, center of commerce, and/or a caravanserai, a roadside inn for travelers. We shed light on how people adapted a productive economy to the local ecological constraints. By adding these data to the limited Qarakhanid archaeobotany from across Central Asia, we provide the first glimpses into cultivation, commerce, and consumption at a Silk Road trading town along the King’s Road, the central artery of ancient Eurasia.
The pistachio (Pistacia vera L.) is commercially cultivated in semi-arid regions around the globe. Archaeobotanical, genetic, and linguistic data suggest that the pistachio was brought under cultivation somewhere within its wild range, spanning southern Central Asia, northern Iran, and northern Afghanistan. Historically, pistachio cultivation has primarily relied on grafting, suggesting that, as with many Eurasian tree crops, domestication resulted from genetically locking hybrids or favored individuals in place. Plant domestication and dispersal research has largely focused on weedy, highly adaptable, self-compatible annuals; in this discussion, we present a case study that involves a dioecious long-lived perennial—a domestication process that would have required a completely different traditional ecological knowledge system than that utilized for grain cultivation. We argue that the pistachio was brought under cultivation in southern Central Asia, spreading westward by at least 2000 years ago (maybe a few centuries earlier to the mountains of modern Syria) and moved eastward only at the end of the first millennium AD. The seeds remain rare in archaeological sites outside its native range, even into the mid-second millennium AD, and may not have been widely cultivated until the past few hundred years.
The article treats 'Eastern' (i.e. Central and Inner Asian) traditions concerning the headdress of the Early Avar elites in the Carpathian Basin. The discussion is focused on a crescent-shape sheet of gold from burial 1 in Kunbábony and parallel finds from Mongolia and present-day China (Inner Mongolia). It is suggested that these objects originally formed part of a representation of 'crowns' sewn on a face-cloth. This would point to an original elite headgear in form of a diadem or headband with a frontal crescent appliqué. Judging from Central and Inner Asian parallels for this type of diadem it seems quite possible that such a crescent 'crown' was part of the War-Hun heritage of the European Avars.
The origins and dispersal of the chicken across the ancient world remains one of the most enigmatic questions regarding Eurasian domesticated animals1,2. The lack of agreement regarding the timing and center of origin is due, in large part, to issues with morphological identifications, a lack of direct dating, and poor preservation of thin bird bones. Historical sources attest to the prominence of chickens in southern Europe and southwest Asia by the last centuries BC3. Likewise, art historical depictions of chickens and anthropomorphic rooster-human chimeras are reoccurring motifs in Central Asian prehistoric and historic traditions4-6. However, when this ritually and economically significant bird spread along the trans-Eurasian exchange routes has remained a mystery. Here we show that chickens were widely raised by people at villages across southern Central Asia from the third century BC through medieval periods for their eggs and likely also meat. In this study, we present archaeological and molecular evidence for the cultivation of chickens for egg production from 12 different Central Asian archaeological sites spanning a millennium and a half. These eggshells were recovered in high abundance at all of these sites, suggesting that chickens were widely raised by people at villages across southern Central Asia from the third century BC through medieval periods and that they were an important part of the overall diet. Contrary to views that ancient peoples of Central Asia were primarily herding sheep, goat, and cattle, these data show that chicken was also important in the subsistence economy and that it was widely spread along the ancient Silk Road.
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