Using weed functional attributes for the identification of irrigation regimes in Jordan

Charles, Michael; Hoppé, Chantelle; Jones, Glynis; Bogaard, Amy; Hodgson, J.

doi:10.1016/s0305-4403(03)00038-4

Cited by 37 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Such arguments are problematic because of the impact that charring itself may have on the size of seed grains, and the numerous other factors that may also influence grain size. Charles et al (2003) demonstrated that, when modern-day fields and crops are available for study, their weed floras can be indicative of the use of irrigation. But sufficiently well-preserved assemblages of charred plant remains from prehistoric sites for such studies are rarely -if ever -recovered from the archaeological record.…”

Section: The Challenge Of Inferring Water Management From Structural mentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental crop growing in Jordan to develop methodology for the identification of ancient crop irrigation

Mithen¹,

Jenkins²,

Jamjoum³

et al. 2008

World Archaeology

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Crop irrigation has long been recognized as having been important for the evolution of social complexity in several parts of the world. Structural evidence for water management, as in the form of wells, ditches and dams, is often difficult to interpret and may be a poor indicator of past irrigation that may have had no need for such constructions. It would be of considerable value, therefore, to be able to infer past irrigation directly from archaeo-botanical remains, and especially the type of archaeo-botanical remains that are relatively abundant in the archaeological record, such as phytoliths. Building on the pioneering work of Rosen and Wiener (1994), this paper describes a cropgrowing experiment designed to explore the impact of irrigation on the formation of phytoliths within cereals. If it can be shown that a systemic and consistent relationship exists between phytolith size, structure and the intensity of irrigation, and if various taphonomic and palaeoenvironmental processes can be controlled for, then the presence of past irrigation can feasibly be inferred from the phytoliths recovered from the archaeological record.

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Section: The Challenge Of Inferring Water Management From Structural mentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental crop growing in Jordan to develop methodology for the identification of ancient crop irrigation

Mithen¹,

Jenkins²,

Jamjoum³

et al. 2008

World Archaeology

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show abstract

“…Such arguments are problematic because of the impact that charring itself may have on the size of seed grains, and the numerous other factors that may also influence grain size. Studies by Jones et al (1995) and Charles et al (2003) demonstrated that when modernday fields and crops are available for study, their weed floras can be indicators of past water availability. Unfortunately, sufficiently well-preserved assemblages of charred plant remains from prehistoric sites for such studies are rarely recovered from the archaeological record.…”

Section: Archaeology Irrigation and Phytolithsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, there are problems in applying this method to archaeological remains. Firstly, as with the method proposed by Jones et al (1995) and Charles et al (2003) it is often impossible to recover a large enough sample from an archaeological site to use this method. Secondly, there are unknown environmental variables that could have affected the carbon isotope signature such as climate and soil chemistry.…”

Section: Archaeology Irrigation and Phytolithsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is possible that the greater amount of available silica coming from wadi water may increase the level of silicon uptake, but our results found that the important factor for affecting changes to phytolith formation was water availability. This inability to detect the difference between rainfall and irrigation is of course true for many methodologies which claim to be able to identify irrigation, such as the FIBS method (Charles et al, 2003). The changes they identify occur as a result of increased water availability and not necessarily as a result of rainfall.…”

Section: Implications For Archaeological Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Irrigation and phytolith formation: an experimental study

Jenkins¹,

Jamjoum²,

Nuimat³

2011

Water, Life and Civilisation

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It has been proposed that phytoliths from archaeological sites can be indicators of water availability and hence inform about past agricultural practices (Rosen and Weiner, 1994;Madella et al., 2009). Rosen and Weiner (1994) found that the number of conjoined phytoliths from cereal husks increased with irrigation while Madella et al. (2009) demonstrated that the ratio of long-celled phytoliths to short-celled phytoliths increased with irrigation. In order to further explore these hypotheses, wheat and barley were experimentally grown from 2005 to 2008 in three different crop growing stations in Jordan. Four different irrigation regimes were initially employed: 0% (rainfall only), 80%, 100% and 120% of the optimum crop water requirements, with a 40% plot being added in the second and third growing seasons. Each plot measured 5 m Â 5 m and a drip irrigation system was used. Environmental variables were measured on a daily basis, and soil and water samples were taken and analysed at the University of Reading. Phytoliths from the husks of these experimentally grown plants were extracted using the dry ashing method. Results demonstrate that although the number of conjoined cells increases with irrigation, there were considerable intersite and inter-year differences suggesting that environmental variables other than water availability affect phytolith uptake and deposition. Furthermore, analytical experiments demonstrated that conjoined phytoliths are subject to change or breakage by external factors, making this methodology problematic to apply to archaeological phytolith assemblages that have an unknown taphonomic history. The ratio of long cells to short cells also responded to increased irrigation, and these forms are not subject to break up as are conjoined forms. Our results from the modern samples of durum wheat and six-row barley show that if an assemblage of single-celled phytoliths consists of over 60% dendritic long cells then this strongly suggests that the crop received optimum levels of water. Further research is needed to determine if this finding is consistent in phytolith samples from the leaves and stems, as suggested by Madella et al. (2009), and in other species of cereals. If this is the case then phytoliths are a valuble tool for assessing the level of past water availability and, potentially, past irrigation.

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“…Furthermore, the possible Greenlandic use of irrigation as an auxiliary supply of water to grassland, rather than to an alternative crop, negates the possibility of using methods successfully used elsewhere to identify irrigation sources such as use of diatom markers [64]. Understanding the weed ecology can reveal past irrigation of cereal crops [12]; functional analysis of the grassland flora has been successfully used to examine hay crops [32], but the effects of past irrigation could be confounded with several other factors identified as affecting site productivity. Regardless of the period and location, the requirement for field irrigation at any particular site is dependent upon a number of factors: these are the water inputs through precipitation and ground-water movement, water drainage from the site, transpiration by plants and evaporation from the vegetation and soil surfaces.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soils and palaeo-climate based evidence for irrigation requirements in Norse Greenland

Adderley¹,

Simpson²

2006

Journal of Archaeological Science

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Establishing and sustaining agricultural production was a key factor in the success of Norse settlements during the landnám colonisation across the North Atlantic. In light of the occurrence of channel features in several abandoned home-field areas of the Norse Eastern Settlement of Greenland, and the irrigation requirements of presentday Greenlandic sheep-farmers questions are raised: was irrigation used by the Norse settlers of Greenland on their home-field areas? and, if so, how frequently? Modelling of soil chemical, physical and soil-water hydraulic properties integrated with contemporary highresolution climatic data demonstrate a frequent requirement for irrigation. Soil moisture deficits are related to the duration and intensity of winter temperature. Using the winter Dye 3 ice core δ 18 O record as a climatic proxy, the frequency of moisture deficits, based on comparing mean winter temperatures, indicates that there was a frequent irrigation requirement to maintain home-field productivity, increasing throughout the period of settlement until the 14th Century.

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Using weed functional attributes for the identification of irrigation regimes in Jordan

Cited by 37 publications

References 11 publications

Experimental crop growing in Jordan to develop methodology for the identification of ancient crop irrigation

Experimental crop growing in Jordan to develop methodology for the identification of ancient crop irrigation

Irrigation and phytolith formation: an experimental study

Soils and palaeo-climate based evidence for irrigation requirements in Norse Greenland

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