Interpreting Diachronic Size Variation in Prehistoric Central Asian Cereal Grains

Matuzevičiūtė, Giedrė Motuzaitė; Mir-Makhamad, Basira; Spengler, Robert N.

doi:10.3389/fevo.2021.633634

Cited by 14 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 81 publications

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“…Furthermore, they asserted that the movement of domesticates from the northern Indian subcontinent into Kashmir where mountain environments may have driven a change in seed size owing to the weakening of summer and winter precipitation and lower water availability after ca. 2000 BCE (Lone et al, 2020;Shah et al, 2020;Spate et al, 2022a), as has been noted elsewhere in Central Asia (Motuzaite Matuzeviciute et al, 2021). Sharma et al (2020), based on a comprehensive account of macro-botanical remains and direct dates of food grains from Binjor, an Indus Valley (Harappan) site in northwestern India, revealed that the area was occupied by an agricultural society during the Early Phase (ca.…”

Section: Late Glacial Tomentioning

confidence: 70%

Agricultural practices in India during the Holocene: A pollen view point and a critical appraisal

Quamar¹,

Kar²

2022

The Holocene

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Pollen assemblages provide valuable insights into the beginning of cereal-based agricultural practices and the transition from a hunting and gathering to a sedentary and food-producing way of life. Anthropogenic pollen indicators (APIs) and their precise identification, with respect to taxonomic resolution, can help to document the history of agricultural development, pastoral activities and human-induced land-use changes, particularly for the Holocene Epoch. Moreover, careful selection of pollen types, and/or indices, established for a particular region, are useful for obtaining meaningful reconstructions of anthropogenic activities through time. Specific pollen-markers have been used to deduce the inception of agriculture and the impact of anthropogenic activities on the landscape, from the different regions of the world. For India, Cerealia, and other cultural plant pollen taxa, such as Amaranthaceae, Caryophyllaceae, Brassicaceae, Polygonaceae, Artemisia, Cannabis sativa, Alternanthera, Urtica, Rumex and Borreria have been used as marker pollen types for indicating agricultural practices and other anthropogenic activities. In this communication, we have made an attempt to trace the advent and intensification of agricultural practices in the varied physiographic regions of the Indian sub-continent, on the basis of the available palynological records. We have further critically analysed the plausibility of agricultural practices and other human activities during the Late Pleistocene/Pre and Early Holocene with respect to the Indian scenario.

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Section: Late Glacial Tomentioning

confidence: 70%

Agricultural practices in India during the Holocene: A pollen view point and a critical appraisal

Quamar¹,

Kar²

2022

The Holocene

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“…The plump and spherical nature of both barley and wheat grains in the assemblage, however, raises questions about the effect of local growing conditions (e.g., aridity, access to water) on the morphology of grain seeds. A consideration already highlighted by Miller (1999) and further built upon by others (e.g., Spengler, 2015;Matuzeviciute et al, 2021).…”

Section: Domesticated Grainsmentioning

confidence: 90%

Agriculture in the Karakum: An archaeobotanical analysis from Togolok 1, southern Turkmenistan (ca. 2300–1700 B.C.)

Billings

Cerasetti²,

Forni³

et al. 2022

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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Southern Central Asia witnessed widespread expansion in urbanism and exchange, between roughly 2200 and 1500 B.C., fostering a new cultural florescence, sometimes referred to as the Greater Khorasan Civilization. Decades of detailed archeological investigation have focused on the development of urban settlements, political systems, and inter-regional exchange within and across the broader region, but little is known about the agricultural systems that supported these cultural changes. In this paper, we present the archaeobotanical results of material recovered from Togolok 1, a proto-urban settlement along the Murghab River alluvial fan located in southeastern Turkmenistan. This macrobotanical assemblage dates to the late 3rd - early 2nd millennia B.C., a time associated with important cultural transformations in southern Central Asia. We demonstrate that people at the site were cultivating and consuming a diverse range of crops including, barley, wheat, legumes, grapes, and possibly plums and apples or pears. This, together with the associated material culture and zooarchaeological evidence, suggest a regionally adapted mixed agropastoral economy. The findings at Togolok 1 contribute to the ongoing discussion of dietary choices, human/landscape interactions, and the adaptation of crops to diverse ecosystems in prehistoric Central Asia.

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“…However, systematic macrobotanical research at a handful of sites in the mountains of Central Asia over the past decade, combined with direct radiocarbon dating of carbonized seeds, indicates that the earliest pastoralist strategies there were accompanied by wheat, barley, and millet agriculture (Doumani et al, 2015;Frachetti et al, 2010;Yatoo et al, 2020;Zhou et al, 2020). Similar work has further revealed that Central Asian communities of the later Bronze Age and Iron Age (1000 cal ) cultivated an increasingly wide range of plant domesticates as people facilitated subsequent agricultural dispersals and adapted plants for cultivation in highland environments Motuzaite Matuzeviciute, Mir-Makhamad, & Spengler, 2021;Motuzaite Matuzeviciute, Mir-Makhamad, & Tabaldiev, 2021;Spengler et al, 2013Spengler et al, , 2014. Taken together, this research has greatly shifted our understanding of Central Asia, from a domain of nomadic pastoralists to a region with a compelling record for farming (Spengler et al, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Carbon and oxygen stable isotopic evidence for diverse sheep and goat husbandry strategies amid a Final Bronze Age farming milieu in the Kyrgyz Tian Shan

Hermes

Schmid

Tabaldiev

et al. 2022

Intl J of Osteoarchaeology

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The mountains of Central Asia during the Bronze and Iron Ages are increasingly being reconceived as an important zone for intensive crop cultivation in combination with pastoralist herding. However, very little information is known about how farming practices intersected with livestock husbandry, especially at high-elevation sites. This paper presents the first insights to ancient animal management strategies in the Tian Shan through incremental carbon and oxygen stable isotope analysis of domesticated caprine teeth recovered from the Chap-1 farmstead located at 2000 m.a.s.l. in Kyrgyzstan (1065 to 825 cal BCE). We implemented a fully reproducible analysis of time-series isotope data in the R programming language. Results show subtle but variable manipulation of domesticated caprine diets at subannual scales, suggesting mixed strategies of providing access to a small amount of C 4 plant biomass, in addition to summer movements to high pastures where the overall carbon isotopic composition of graze was depleted in 13 C compared with that of the environs of the site or lowland pastures. Nevertheless, caprine dietary intake was overwhelmingly dominated by C 3 plants. Analysis of domesticated caprine birth seasonality reveals off-season fall and winter births, which represent a common strategy employed by ancient producers in Central Asia to improve herd security and extend meat and milk availability. This study illustrates a well-integrated system of agro-pastoralist production that can help clarify the social dynamics underlying food systems in the mountain regions of Central and Inner Asia in the Final Bronze Age. It further reveals the capability for more sedentary agro-pastoralist communities to facilitate wider interregional cultural connections, through limited seasonal herding mobility and investment in highland settlement.

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Interpreting Diachronic Size Variation in Prehistoric Central Asian Cereal Grains

Cited by 14 publications

References 81 publications

Agricultural practices in India during the Holocene: A pollen view point and a critical appraisal

Agricultural practices in India during the Holocene: A pollen view point and a critical appraisal

Agriculture in the Karakum: An archaeobotanical analysis from Togolok 1, southern Turkmenistan (ca. 2300–1700 B.C.)

Carbon and oxygen stable isotopic evidence for diverse sheep and goat husbandry strategies amid a Final Bronze Age farming milieu in the Kyrgyz Tian Shan

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