Life goes on: Archaeobotanical investigations of diet and ritual at Angkor Thom, Cambodia (14th–15th centuries CE)

Castillo, Cristina; Polkinghorne, Martin; Vincent, Brice; Suy, Tan Boun; Fuller, Dorian Q.

doi:10.1177/0959683617752841

Cited by 22 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…There is no mention of pigeonpea among the plants encountered by a nineteenth century French naturalist in the Mekong valley (Thorel 2001). Despite its absence in the literature archaeological evidence, however, has recently attested to its presence in the fourteenth to fifteenth century in central Cambodia at Angkor Thom (Castillo et al 2018a), with earlier Iron Age occurrences (4th-1st c BC) in southern Thailand (Castillo et al 2016). Archaeobotanical evidence for cultivation in Medieval Cambodia (Castillo et al 2018a) along with the presence of widespread feral populations in anthropogenic habitats (Fig.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite its absence in the literature archaeological evidence, however, has recently attested to its presence in the fourteenth to fifteenth century in central Cambodia at Angkor Thom (Castillo et al 2018a), with earlier Iron Age occurrences (4th-1st c BC) in southern Thailand (Castillo et al 2016). Archaeobotanical evidence for cultivation in Medieval Cambodia (Castillo et al 2018a) along with the presence of widespread feral populations in anthropogenic habitats (Fig. 3;Hu 2005;van der Maesen 1980, 257-258), suggest that it may have formerly been more widely cultivated in southern China, and probably also Island Southeast Asia.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp. origins and domestication: the South and Southeast Asian archaeobotanical evidence

Fuller

Murphy

Kingwell-Banham

et al. 2019

Genet Resour Crop Evol

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Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp. commonly known as pigeonpea, red gram or gungo pea is an important grain legume crop, particularly in rain-fed agricultural regions in the semi-arid tropics, including Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. This paper provides a baseline for the study of the domestication and early history of C. cajan, through reviewing its modern wild distribution, seed morphometrics of wild and domesticated populations, historical linguistics and the archaeological record. The distribution of wild populations, including published records and additional herbarium collections, suggest that the wild habitats of pigeonpea were at the interface of the forest-edge areas and more open savanna plains in eastern Peninsular India (e.g. Telangana, Chattisgarh, Odisha). Early archaeological finds presented here have been recovered from both the Southern peninsula and Odisha. Historical linguistic data suggests early differentiation into longer and shorter growing season varieties, namely arhar and tuar types, in prehistory. Pigeonpea had spread to Thailand more than 2000 years ago. Measurements of seeds from modern populations provide a baseline for studying domestication from archaeological seeds. Available measurements taken on archaeological Cajanus spp. suggest that all archaeological collections thus far fall into a domesticated Length:Width ratio, while they may also pick up the very end of the trend towards evolution of larger size (the end of the domestication episode) between 3700 and 3200 years BP. This suggests a trend over time indicating selection under domestication had begun before 3700 years ago and can be inferred to have started 5000-4500 years ago.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp. origins and domestication: the South and Southeast Asian archaeobotanical evidence

Fuller

Murphy

Kingwell-Banham

et al. 2019

Genet Resour Crop Evol

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“…Excavations at the Royal Palace in Angkor Thom have also uncovered macrobotanical remains and evidence for continued use and occupation within this location during the 14th–early 15th centuries (36). Although the royal elite may have left the city during this period, the presence of botanical remains at this site suggest continued habitation in the area, perhaps by a Buddhist or lay community associated with the nearby Tep Pranam temple (36). Evidence at Angkor Wat and additional studies of tradeware ceramics in the Greater Angkor region reveal a continued, though reduced, population during the 15th–16th centuries (37, 38).…”

Section: The Collapse Of Angkor: Reviewing the Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Temple occupation and the tempo of collapse at Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Carter

Stark

Quintus

et al. 2019

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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The 9th–15th century Angkorian state was Southeast Asia’s greatest premodern empire and Angkor Wat in the World Heritage site of Angkor is one of its largest religious monuments. Here we use excavation and chronometric data from three field seasons at Angkor Wat to understand the decline and reorganization of the Angkorian Empire, which was a more protracted and complex process than historians imagined. Excavation data and Bayesian modeling on a corpus of 16 radiocarbon dates in particular demand a revised chronology for the Angkor Wat landscape. It was initially in use from the 11th century CE with subsequent habitation until the 13th century CE. Following this period, there is a gap in our dates, which we hypothesize signifies a change in the use of the occupation mounds during this period. However, Angkor Wat was never completely abandoned, as the dates suggest that the mounds were in use again in the late 14th–early 15th centuries until the 17th or 18th centuries CE. This break in dates points toward a reorganization of Angkor Wat’s enclosure space, but not during the historically recorded 15th century collapse. Our excavation data are consistent with multiple lines of evidence demonstrating the region’s continued ideological importance and residential use, even after the collapse and shift southward of the polity’s capital. We argue that fine-grained chronological analysis is critical to building local historical sequences and illustrate how such granularity adds nuance to how we interpret the tempo of organizational change before, during, and after the decline of Angkor.

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“…Finds of these have generally been rare, probably due to the oily nature of the seeds, but both species are known from sites in the Ganges Valley, such as at Malhar (Tewari et al 2000), Imlidh Kurd (Saraswat 1993a), Senuwar (Saraswat and Chanchala 1995), Narhan (Saraswat et al 1994) and Raja-Nal-Ka-Tila (Pokharia et al 2017). Sesame has also been found in Southern Thailand from the late 1st millennium BC (Castillo 2013;Castillo et al 2016a) as well as fourteenth century Cambodia (Castillo et al 2018a).…”

Section: Other Cropsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agricultural systems in Bangladesh: the first archaeobotanical results from Early Historic Wari-Bateshwar and Early Medieval Vikrampura

Rahman

Castillo

Murphy

et al. 2020

Archaeol Anthropol Sci

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The present paper reports the first systematic archaeobotanical evidence from Bangladesh together with direct AMS radiocarbon dates on crop remains. Macro-botanical remains were collected by flotation from two sites, Wari-Bateshwar (WB), an Early Historic archaeological site, dating mainly between 400 and 100 BC, with a later seventh century AD temple complex, and Raghurampura Vikrampura (RV), a Buddhist Monastery (vihara) located within the Vikrampura city site complex and dating to the eleventh and sixteenth centuries AD. Despite being a tropical country, with high rainfall and intensive soil processes, our work demonstrates that conventional archaeobotany, the collection of macro-remains through flotation, has much potential towards putting together a history of crops and agricultural systems in Bangladesh. The archaeobotanical assemblage collected from both sites indicates the predominance of rice agriculture, which would have been practiced in summer. Spikelet bases are of domesticated type rice, while grain metrics suggest the majority of rice was probably subspecies japonica. The presence of some wetland weeds suggests at least some of the rice was grown in wet (flooded) systems, but much of it may have been rainfed as inferred from the Southeast Asian weed Acmella paniculata. Other crops include winter cereals, barley and possible oat, and small numbers of summer millets (Pennisetum glaucum, Sorghum bicolor, Setaria italica), a wide diversity of summer and winter pulses (14 spp.), cotton, sesame and mustard seed. Pulse crops included many known from India. Thus, while most crops indicate diffusion of crops from India eastwards, the absence of indica rice could also indicate some diffusion from Southeast Asia. The later site RV also produced evidence of the rice bean (Vigna umbellata), a domesticate of mainland Southeast Asia. These data provide the first empirical evidence for reconstructing past agriculture in Bangladesh and for the role of connections to both India and mainland Southeast Asia in the development of crop diversity in the Ganges delta region.

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Life goes on: Archaeobotanical investigations of diet and ritual at Angkor Thom, Cambodia (14th–15th centuries CE)

Cited by 22 publications

References 68 publications

Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp. origins and domestication: the South and Southeast Asian archaeobotanical evidence

Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp. origins and domestication: the South and Southeast Asian archaeobotanical evidence

Temple occupation and the tempo of collapse at Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Agricultural systems in Bangladesh: the first archaeobotanical results from Early Historic Wari-Bateshwar and Early Medieval Vikrampura

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