Ecological-cultural inheritance in the wetlands: the non-linear transition to plant food production in the southern Levant

Abstract

The paper discusses a multi-proxy archaeobotanical dataset from the published macrobotanical and microbotanical research of 19 Epipalaeolithic sites over a period of 13.5 ka (ca. 25-11.5 ka cal bp) in the southern Levant. The archaeobotanical record includes over 200 phytolith samples extracted from sediments of 11 sites, macrobotanical evidence from seeds, plant tissues and wood charcoal from 11 sites and other microbotanical data from starches and starch spherulites from three sites. Phytolith assemblages show that Epipalaeolithic hunter-gatherers relied on wetland plant resources, and the macrobotanical evidence demonstrates the cultural importance of wetland resources to Late Epipalaeolithic foodways. The paper assesses the archaeobotanical data, using niche construction theory (NCT) to argue that human impacts in the wetlands over generations increased wetland productivity and created long-lasting ecological and cultural inheritances that allowed for the evolution and proliferation of a wetland-based system of wild plant food production. This paper proposes the idea that wetlands provided Epipalaeolithic people with a ‘domestication laboratory’ that allowed them to interact and modify their environment and also to experiment and gain new knowledge to build the long-lasting ecological-cultural inheritances necessary for the transition to plant food production. Importantly, the ecological-cultural inheritance of wild plant food production in the wetlands enabled the non-linear transition to cereal-based wild plant food production and domestication that took place in the southern Levant.

Waterfowl eggshell refines palaeoenvironmental reconstruction and supports multi-species niche construction at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition in the Levant

“…We suggest that management of wetlands increased the productivity of these environments to the extent that waterfowl remained to breed. This fits in the third category of hunter-gatherer niche construction of enhancing and/or expanding the geographic range of specific animal species, as defined by Nikulina et al, (2022) and is supported by recent discussion of habitat modification in the Levantine Epipalaeolithic wetlands based on phytolith evidence (Ramsey, 2023). The importance of wetlands as settings for niche construction activities and centres for innovation in human subsistence across the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary is increasingly apparent.…”

The use and context of fiber plants during the middle preceramic: evidence from La Yerba II and III, south coast of Peru

“…The use of various taxa of estuarine and wetland plants reflects the sophisticated ecological understanding of the ancient inhabitants of La Yerba II and III and highlights the critical significance of such ecologies in fostering diverse economic and social dynamics observed in many regions worldwide (Ramsey and Rosen, 2016;Ramsey et al, 2017;Ramsey, 2023).…”