Records of “new” glume wheat in France: a review

Abstract

Following the first identification in 2000 of a new type of hulled wheat from three Neolithic settlements and a Bronze Age one in Greece, many finds of this ''new'' glume wheat have been reported from all over Europe and the Near East.

Middle Neolithic farming of open-air sites in SE France: new insights from archaeobotanical investigations of three wells found at Les Bagnoles (L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, Dépt. Vaucluse, France)

“…Until now, the new type of glume wheat had only been found at a Middle Bronze Age site (ca. 1500 bc) in southern France (Toulemonde et al 2015), while Neolithic finds seemed to be restricted to the Linearbandkeramik (LBK) area. The recent finds of this taxon in northern Italy (Rottoli and Castiglioni 2009) and other Mediterranean sites such as La Draga and Can Sadurní in Catalonia (Antolín et al 2015;Antolín 2016) show that it was present in the area since the 6th millennium bc, but probably not as a crop on its own.…”

Multiplex PCR effectively identifies tetraploid Triticum AABB – or AAGG-genome species

“…Our multiplex PCR marker should also be useful for the identification of ancient remains as well as modern genetic resources. The so-called ‘new-glume wheat’, featuring charred spikelets with a characteristic morphology as found at archaeological sites in Europe (Jones et al , 2000; Kohler-Schneider, 2003; Toulemonde et al , 2015), could be timopheevii, but its identity has remained unclear, mainly because its morphology is not exactly the same as that of modern cultivated timopheevii and its wild progenitor, T. araraticum . The process of domestication of timopheevii is mysterious due to the strong resemblance between charred seed remains and those of emmer.…”

Genetic diversity, distribution and domestication history of the neglected GGAtAtgenepool of wheat

“…The glume bases of these archaeological finds morphologically resemble T. timopheevii more than any other extant domesticated wheat (Jones et al 2000). After these finds of NGW in Greece, this wheat was also identified at Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Italy, Poland, Germany and France (Bieniek 2002(Bieniek , 2007Bogaard et al 2007Bogaard et al , 2013Ergun 2018;Fairbairn et al 2002;Fiorentino and Ulaş 2010;Fischer and Rösch 2004;Hajnalová 2007;Kenéz et al 2015;Kohler-Schneider 2003;Kreuz and Boenke 2002;Perego 2017;Rottoli and Pessina 2007;Toulemonde et al 2015;Ulaş and Fiorentino 2020;Valamoti and Kotsakis 2007). Earlier finds of an 'unusual' glume wheat in Serbia (Borojevic 1991) and Turkey (de Moulins 1997) have subsequently been recognized as NGW (Kenéz et al 2015;Jones et al 2000;Kroll 2016).…”

“…Turkey, caryopses and spikelet bases at the early Bronze Age settlement of Clermont-Ferrand in France, and rich deposits including whole spikelets at bronze age sites in Italy, demonstrated that, at least in some places, NGW was a major crop in itself[Bogaard et al 2013, Kenéz et al 2014Toulemonde et al 2015, Bogaard et al 2017, Perego 2017, Ergun 2018.…”