Revising the wheat crops of Neolithic Britain

McLaren, Frances S

doi:10.2307/j.ctvh1dtbb.14

Cited by 3 publications

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“…The recovery of a mix of cereal varieties in one deposit is not proof that they were necessarily grown together, but by correlating the crop species with the accompanying weed seeds, van der Veen (1995) has demonstrated that emmer and spelt were grown together in the same field during the British Iron Age. A study of a late Bronze Age settlement at Stillfried, Austria found four different types of wheat in one pit, with traces of a fifth (Kohler-Schneider 2002), and at the Neolithic Turkish site of Can Hasan, a 'huge variety' of different strains of wheat were grown (McLaren 2000).…”

Section: Productive Landscapesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Productive Landscapes: a Global Perspective on Sustainable Agriculture

Guttmann-Bond

2014

Landscapes

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The connections between agriculture and landscape are well established in western perceptions. Agricultural landscapes in the Western world have, however, become increasingly industrialised and low in biodiversity, and the standard practice in developed countries is to grow large fields of single crops sprayed with pesticides and herbicides. Many leading agronomists believe that such industrial methods are the only way to a growing global population. However, many opposing agronomists argue that agroecology is a more productive and efficient use of land. This paper is a review of archaeological, environmental and ethnographic evidence for sustainable agricultural land management, as it has been practiced in the past, and as it is practiced today in countries that use traditional, pre-industrial methods. A range of evidence demonstrates that small, biodiverse farms are more productive per hectare than agribusinesses that practice monocropping. It is suggested that there can be compromise, and that substantial environment benefits accrue where agroecological methods are introduced into industrialised agricultural systems. A key point is that traditional varieties of crops are important adaptations to marginal environments; it is essential to food security that these resources, which were developed over thousands of years but which are now vanishing at an alarming rate, are not lost.

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Section: Productive Landscapesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Productive Landscapes: a Global Perspective on Sustainable Agriculture

Guttmann-Bond

2014

Landscapes

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Thoughts on the ‘Repacked’ Neolithic Revolution

Thomas

2003

Antiquity

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Can't find a pulse? Celtic bean (Vicia fabaL.) in British prehistory

Treasure

Church

2016

Environmental Archaeology

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Archaeobotanical research on prehistoric crops in Britain has primarily focussed on cereals and the potential importance of alternative crops, such as pulses, has often been overlooked. This paper reviews evidence for Celtic bean (Vicia faba L.) in British prehistory, using a database of archaeobotanical assemblages from 75 sites. Celtic bean is rare in the Neolithic -Early Bronze Age and it only becomes frequent from the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 1500 cal BC) onwards, particularly in southern England. Though there is a paucity of evidence at many sites, it is suggested that this reflects a preservation bias and in some areas at least, Celtic bean formed an important element of past agricultural systems.Keywords: Pulse, Celtic bean, Prehistoric Britain, Archaeobotany IntroductionWithin the last few decades, knowledge of crops in prehistoric Britain has significantly expanded and benefitted from extensive sampling programmes to recover plant remains. In particular, the expansion of developer-funded archaeology has resulted in the creation of large archaeobotanical datasets (Hall and Kenward 2006). Despite this, archaeobotanical research on prehistoric crops in Britain has primarily focussed on cereals and the potential role of alternative crops has received comparatively little study. There is considerable evidence to indicate that a wide range of crops were cultivated in prehistoric Britain, including oil crops, such as flax, opium poppy and brassicas, and also pulses, such as pea and Celtic bean (Pelling and Campbell 2013, 58). This paper draws upon a large and predominantly untapped archaeobotanical dataset for prehistoric Britain, focussing on evidence for an understudied crop, Celtic bean (Vicia faba L.).Celtic bean (Vicia faba L.) (Figs. 1 and 2), also referred to as Horse bean, is a member of the Fabaceae family. Celtic bean seeds are small, suboval and rounded in shape, although significant morphological variability exists between seeds and it is possible that sub-varieties were present across prehistoric Europe (Renfrew 1973, 108; Zohary et al. 2012, 89-92).Written sources indicate that beans were an important component of Medieval diets in Europe, being particularly valued as a protein-rich food, often amongst poorer populations where it served as a substitute for meat (Hanawalt 1986;Dyer 1989;Pounds 1994;Rippon 2001;Moffett 2006). This is clearly reflected in an extract from a late-fourteenth century document which stated that 'labourers of old were not wont to eat of wheaten bread; their meat was of beans …' (Hanawalt 1986, 55). In addition to human consumption, beans also provided a high quality animal fodder alongside other pulse crops, such as peas (Hamilton and Thomas 2012, 52; Moffett 2006, 53;Rippon 2004). In crop husbandry regimes, beans were cultivated as both a garden and field crop and the benefits of cultivating beans to improve soil fertility was well-established and clearly recognised by the Medieval period (Gross and Butcher 1995, 109; Pounds 1994, 200;Rippon 2001;Tusser 1580). Moreover...

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Revising the wheat crops of Neolithic Britain

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Productive Landscapes: a Global Perspective on Sustainable Agriculture

Productive Landscapes: a Global Perspective on Sustainable Agriculture

Thoughts on the ‘Repacked’ Neolithic Revolution

Can't find a pulse? Celtic bean (Vicia fabaL.) in British prehistory

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