Agricultural origins from the ground up: Archaeological approaches to plant domestication

Abstract

The timing, geographical locations, causes, and consequences of crop domestication have long been major concerns of archaeologists, and agricultural origins and dispersals are currently more relevant than ever to scientists seeking solutions to elusive problems involving food insecurity and global health disparities. Perennial research issues that archaeologists continue to tackle include (1) thinking outside centers of origin that were based on limited and insufficient past knowledge; (2) distinguishing between single and multiple domestications of specific crops; (3) measuring the pace of domestication; and (4) decoupling domestication from agricultural economies. Paleoethnobotanists have expanded their toolkits to include analysis of ancient and modern DNA and have added increasingly sophisticated techniques in the field and the laboratory to derive precise chronological sequences to assess morphological changes in ancient and often fragmentary archaeobotanical remains and to correctly interpret taphonomy and context. Multiple lines of archaeological evidence are ideally brought together, and whenever possible, these are integrated with information from complementary sources. We discuss current perspectives and anthropological approaches to research that have as their goals the fuller and broader understanding of ancient farming societies, the plants that were domesticated, the landscapes that were created, and the culinary legacies that were passed on.

A natural adaptive syndrome as a model for the origins of cereal agriculture

“…This continued lack of consensus [6], and even confusion over agricultural origins, justifies the need to continue to challenge existing models [7]. However, since the inconclusive results of the three workshops, a further layer of complexity has been added to origin of agriculture studies.…”

Method and Theory of Early Farming: The Orinoco and Caribbean Coasts of South America

“…But there are still serious empirical problems hampering understanding of the early history of plant domestication that need to be sorted out before there can by any definitive patterns to compare and interpret (Fritz, 2005;Langlie, Mueller, Spengler, & Fritz, 2014). For example, the domestication of maize is still inadequately reconstructed, and there are strong conflicting opinions about the crops' development (c.f., Buckler & Stevens, 2006;Eubanks, 2006).…”

“…Tiny primitive cobs assumed to be early Archaic age from dates on associated charcoal instead gave early Formative dates than the associated charcoal. Direct dates show that the cobs are now only between 4700-5400 BP at the earliest, roughly 2000 to 3000 years younger than the layers they were in (Langlie et al, 2014(Langlie et al, , p. 1602Piperno & Flannery, 2001). In addition to the descent of prehistoric specimens from higher to esr.ccsenet.org Earth Science Research Vol.…”

“…The secure identification of ancient plant remains is itself very difficult no matter what the type of material (Langlie et al, 2014;Shillito, 2013). Most claims for finds of very ancient cultigens are based on microfossil identifications that are accurate only to family, or at best genus (Crowther, Haslam, Oakden, Walde, Mercadern, 2014, p. 101).…”

“…Conclusions for species level identifications and cultivation status from such specimens require risky interpretive extrapolations, such as that a plant from a certain family is not local so therefore it must be an introduced cultigen species (e.g., Piperno, 2011). Such assumptions don't take into account that modern distributions may not be representative of ancient ones (Langlie et al, 2014). Ancient remains often differ inscrutably from modern reference collections, making their identity mysterious (e.g., Spencer & Redmond, 2014: 844-848).…”