Cereal cultivation and domestication as shown by microtexture analysis of sickle gloss through confocal microscopy

Migration, adaptation, innovation: The spread of Neolithic harvesting technologies in the Mediterranean

“…They were presumably hafted to form a slightly serrated edge, within a composite sickle. Use-wear patterns indicate the harvesting of cereals; despite the reduced sample, certain variability has been observed in the wear pattern, probably because of the harvesting of plants in different states of ripeness [38]. Harvesting crops before full ripeness is well-known behaviour among traditional Mediterranean farming communities and might respond to a risk-reduction strategy, to reduce grain loss, a response to food shortages, but as well to specific food habits [60,62].…”

“…At the time Neolithic populations started to spread in the Mediterranean they had already faced important changes in all aspects of society. Whereas the first wave of cultivators spread to Cyprus during the 10 th -9 th millennia BCE [33], the Neolithic expanded further across the Mediterranean Basin between 4,000 and 2,000 years after the emergence of the first cereal cultivation in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A [22,[34][35][36][37][38]. During this long period, harvesting technologies passed through several transformations, concerning both the methods of production of the stone inserts used to form the cutting edge of the harvesting tools [39][40][41][42] and the shape and mode of usage of the harvesting tools themselves [43][44][45][46][47][48].…”

The mineralogy and structure of use-wear polish on chert

“…As it stands, polishes produced by the abrasion of chert against bone, antler, ivory, spruce wood, and beech wood do not differ in their mineralogy from unused chert surfaces. Sickle polish has in the past been studied because it is particularly strong 4,7,13,23,33 . For the automated experiments we conducted, however, it was not possible to build a set-up in which we could repeat linear motions on grasses.…”

Harvesting and processing wild cereals in the Upper Palaeolithic Yellow River Valley, China

“…The Shizitan site cluster comprises a few dozen Upper Palaeolithic localities (c. 28 000-8500 cal BP) distributed along the Qingshui River, a tributary of the Yellow River, in Jixian, Shanxi Province, on the Loess plateau (Linfen Cultural Bureau of Shanxi Province 1989; Shizitan Archaeology Team 2010, , 2016Song & Shi 2017). The current study focuses on two recently excavated localities: 1) locality 29 (hereafter SZT29; 36˚2'54'' north, 110˚35'22'' east, 723m asl; c. 28 000-13 000 cal BP), which provides the longest occupational sequence in the site cluster (Song & Shi 2017); and 2) the latest phase of locality 5 (hereafter SZT5; 36°02'50'' north, 110°35'17'' east, 719m asl; c. 10 000 cal BP), which is one of the final occupations of the entire Shizitan area (Figures 1 & 2) (Shizitan Archaeology Team 2016).…”