Agriculture in the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age of Asia Minor

Fairbairn, Andrew

doi:10.1002/9781118970959.ch11

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…In the case of chestnut and walnut, the first evidences of propagation by humans or arboriculture as an ancillary agricultural activity are usually associated to eastern countries, such as Iran starting from 2500 BC (Djamali et al 2010), Georgia from 2400 BC (Kvavadze 2016), Israel from 1800 BC (Langgut 2014), as well as Turkey and Greece from 1500 BC (Bottema 2000;Bottema-Mac Gillavry 2005;Çizer 2006;Stock et al 2020;Fairbairn 2021), even if there is palynological evidence of Neolithic usage in Italy (Kelly and Huntley 1991;Kaltenrieder et al 2010). The latter finding seems to question the scheme of an origin of cultivation generally flowing in the East to West direction.…”

Section: Western Vs Eastern Roman Empire Territoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Roman Legacy on European Chestnut and Walnut Arboriculture

Krebs

Ulmke

Tinner

et al. 2022

Environmental Archaeology

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The political and administrative unification process under the Roman Empire resulted not only in a progressive linguistic, religious, and cultural homogenisation of the concerned population, but also in the need of trade and exchanges for satisfying new dietary habits and markets. In this paper, we use palaeoecological pollen and macroremain records extracted from Neotoma online database and from scientific literature to analyse the contribution of the Romans in the distribution and cultivation history of Castanea sativa and Juglans regia, two tree species, which are usually considered highly connected with Romanisation. Our results highlight a substantial difference in the impact of the Romans on the history of the two species between the territories of the Western and Eastern Empire, where the Roman influence is much less evident. In the western territories, Juglans regia experienced a significant pre-Roman increase and spread, which was only partially intensified under Roman domination. Castanea sativa, on the contrary, benefited from a significant boost following the Roman conquest, especially in the mountain areas south of the Alps and in France. After the fall of the Roman Empire this led to the traditional medieval chestnut civilisation in which the chestnut tree became a main source of livelihood.

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