Archaeological fuel remains as indicators of ancient west Asian agropastoral and land-use systems

Miller, Norton G.; Marston, John M.

doi:10.1016/j.jaridenv.2011.11.021

Cited by 51 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 18 publications

(26 reference statements)

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“…Herd animals at Begash could have brought Galium seeds into the site; likewise, wool processing requires cleaning of sheep, goat, and possibly camel wool or hair. Miller (1989Miller ( , 1990Miller and Gleason 1994;Miller and Smart 1984;Moore et al 1994) argues that the Galium and other wild seeds in macrobotanical assemblages from southwest Asia likely originate from dung burning. Seeds are readily incorporated into fires when dung, laden with seeds, is burned for fuel in wood-poor environments.…”

Section: Evidence For Dung Burningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecotopes and Herd Foraging Practices In the Steppe/Mountain Ecotone of Central Asia During the Bronze and Iron Ages

Spengler¹,

Frachetti

Fritz

2013

Journal of Ethnobiology

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Eurasian mobile pastoralists living in semiarid environments focus on specific locations on the landscape where pasture resources and water are available. Ecotones –or intermediary zones between the mountain and steppe environments– create mosaic landscapes composed of forage-rich patches and other discrete enclaves of useful biota for pastoralist communities. Ecotopes (ecological patches) provide vital resources for the herding systems used in Central Asia today as well as in the past. We document and discuss wild seed composition of archaeobotanical samples from the Bronze and Iron Age site of Begash in southeastern Kazakhstan noting that much of the archaeobotanical assemblage represents carbonized animal dung, which is currently and historically used as fuel in this region by mobile pastoralists. The seeds offer a window into prehistoric herding patterns and provide a nuanced view of prehistoric land use, social interaction, and community formation across discrete ecological nodes in the Bronze and Iron Ages.

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Section: Evidence For Dung Burningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecotopes and Herd Foraging Practices In the Steppe/Mountain Ecotone of Central Asia During the Bronze and Iron Ages

Spengler¹,

Frachetti

Fritz

2013

Journal of Ethnobiology

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“…Sheep and goat herds would have been pushed farther from the city and its adjacent agricultural hinterland. We see evidence for less use of animal dung as fuel, suggesting it was less available to city residents, along with an increase in the presence of agricultural products and markers of overgrazed grassland in that dung, indicating that nutritious grasses were less available close to the city (Figure 2d; Miller and Marston 2012). The rapid increase in population and resulting increase in local agriculture would have led to increased grazing pressure in the remaining pasture lands close to the city, overwhelming local grassland resources, and pushed mobile sheep and goat herds away from the city into new areas, likely including hillslopes less suitable for agriculture.…”

Section: Temporal and Spatial Mismatches In Grazing Systemsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Modeling Resilience and Sustainability in Ancient Agricultural Systems

Marston¹

2015

Journal of Ethnobiology

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The reasons why people adopt unsustainable agricultural practices, and the ultimate environmental implications of those practices, remain incompletely understood in the present world. Archaeology, however, offers unique datasets on coincident cultural and ecological change, and their social and environmental effects. This article applies concepts derived from ecological resilience thinking to assess the sustainability of agricultural practices as a result of long-term interactions between political, economic, and environmental systems. Using the urban center of Gordion, in central Turkey, as a case study, it is possible to identify mismatched social and ecological processes on temporal, spatial, and organizational scales, which help to resolve thresholds of resilience. Results of this analysis implicate temporal and spatial mismatches as a cause for local environmental degradation, and increasing extralocal economic pressures as an ultimate cause for the adoption of unsustainable land-use practices. This analysis suggests that a research approach that integrates environmental archaeology with a resilience perspective has considerable potential for explicating regional patterns of agricultural change and environmental degradation in the past.

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“…While archaeobotanists generally agree that both dung fuel and crop-processing activities contributed plant remains to many archaeological assemblages in Southwest Asia, opinions vary on the relative contribution of each. Miller and Marston (2012) argue that dung fuel remnants contribute heavily to post-Neolithic deposits across Southwest Asia. They reason that increases in seed:wood mass ratios are associated with elevated dung fuel use and diminished wood availability.…”

Section: Examining Dung Fuel In Southwest Asiamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Miller has convincingly argued that increasing dung use often relates to increased aridity or phases of decreased wood availability (e.g., Miller and Marston 2012), but as Deckers (2011) rightfully argues, dung and wood fuel offer different heating properties and may be selectively chosen for practical rather than environmental reasons, complicating interpretations to some degree. Exploring this issue in more detail is important.…”

Section: Considering the Relative Use Of Dung And Wood Fuelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Considering the two datasets side-by-side allows for a fuller understanding of fuel selection practices, but also presents methodological difficulties on how best to consider relative abundance and how to compare wood data from hand-picked samples to remains recovered via flotation. Currently weight measures of wood and seeds provide a simple and effective way to quantify and compare assemblages at the site level either regionally or between phases (Miller and Marston 2012). It remains difficult, however, to estimate the precise extent to which each fuel source contributed to individual burning events.…”

Section: Considering the Relative Use Of Dung And Wood Fuelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Examining Fuel Use in Antiquity: Archaeobotanical and Anthracological Approaches in Southwest Asia

Smith

Dotzel

Fountain

et al. 2015

EBL

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This article considers the study of wood and dung fuel use in antiquity across Southwest Asia by anthracologists and archaeobotanists. In recent years, the socially conditioned nature of fuel use has been highlighted and many scholars are stressing the central importance of fuel to pre-modern societies as on par with subsistence and tool use. By elevating and unifying the study of ancient fuel through anthracological, archaeobotanical, geochemical, and micromorphological studies, detailed insights into cultural practices, decision making, and resource use in the past can be gained. We provide a brief review of studies examining ancient fuel use and reflect on the integration of wood and seed data where seed assemblages are indicative of dung fuel use.

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Archaeological fuel remains as indicators of ancient west Asian agropastoral and land-use systems

Cited by 51 publications

References 18 publications

Ecotopes and Herd Foraging Practices In the Steppe/Mountain Ecotone of Central Asia During the Bronze and Iron Ages

Ecotopes and Herd Foraging Practices In the Steppe/Mountain Ecotone of Central Asia During the Bronze and Iron Ages

Modeling Resilience and Sustainability in Ancient Agricultural Systems

Examining Fuel Use in Antiquity: Archaeobotanical and Anthracological Approaches in Southwest Asia

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