The Khmer did not live by rice alone: Archaeobotanical investigations at Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm

21 pages. Published first in "Archaeological Research in Asia" by ElsevierThe Angkorian Empire was at its peak from the 10th to 13th centuries CE. It wielded great influence across mainland Southeast Asia and is now one of the most archaeologically visible polities due to its expansive religious building works. This paper presents archaeobotanical evidence from two of the most renowned Angkorian temples largely associated with kings and elites, Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm. But it focuses on the people that dwelt within the temple enclosures, some of whom were involved in the daily functions of the temple. Archaeological work indicates that temple enclosures were areas of habitation within the Angkorian urban core and the temples and their enclosures were ritual, political, social, and economic landscapes. This paper provides the first attempt to reconstruct some aspects of the lives of the non-elites living within the temple enclosures by examining the archaeobotanical evidence, both macroremains and phytoliths, from residential contexts and data derived from inscriptions and Zhou Daguan's historical account dating to the 13th century CE. Research indicates that plants found within the temple enclosure of Ta Prohm and Angkor Wat were grown for ritual or medicinal use, and also formed important components of the diet and household economy.We wish to thank the APSARA National Authority for their collaboration and permission to undertake excavations within the Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm enclosures. We thank So Malay and Martin King for administrative support, and Greater Angkor Project 2013–2015 field crew members, whose labor supported this research. This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [grant number DP1092663]. The 2015 fieldwork at Angkor Wat was also supported by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration Grant and a Dumbarton Oaks Project Grant. The phytolith samples from Angkor Wat were collected by Tegan McGillivray in 2015, processed at University College London by Lindsay Duncan, counted by Alison Weisskopf and analysed by Eleanor Kingwell-Banham. Archaeobotanical research at Ta Prohm was supported by Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) [grant number NE/N010957/1]. We also wish to thank The Robert Christie Foundation. Finally, we would like to thank Philip Piper for the financial support of the dating of botanical remains through the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship [grant number FT100100527] and Rachel Wood for radiocarbon dating the samples

Phytoliths as a tool for investigations of agricultural origins and dispersals around the world

Agricultural origins and dispersals are subjects of fundamental importance to archaeology as well as many other scholarly disciplines. These investigations are world-wide in scope and require significant amounts of paleobotanical data attesting to the exploitation of wild progenitors of crop plants and subsequent domestication and spread. Accordingly, for the past few decades the development of methods for identifying the remains of wild and domesticated plant species has been a focus of paleo-ethnobotany. Phytolith analysis has increasingly taken its place as an important independent contributor of data in all areas of the globe, and the volume of literature on the subject is now both very substantial and disseminated in a range of international journals. In this paper, experts who have carried out the hands-on work review the utility and importance of phytolith analysis in documenting the domestication and dispersals of crop plants around the world. It will serve as an important resource both to paleo-ethnobotanists and other scholars interested in the development and spread of agriculture

Local diversity in settlement, demography and subsistence across the southern Indian Neolithic-Iron Age transition: site growth and abandonment at Sanganakallu-Kupgal

The Southern Indian Neolithic-Iron Age transition demonstrates considerable regional variability in settlement location, density, and size. While researchers have shown that the region around the Tungabhadra and Krishna River basins displays significant subsistence and demographic continuity, and intensification, from the Neolithic into the Iron Age ca. 1200 cal. BC, archaeological and chronometric records in the Sanganakallu region point to hilltop village expansion during the Late Neolithic and ‘Megalithic’ transition period (ca. 1400–1200 cal. BC) prior to apparent abandonment ca. 1200 cal. BC, with little evidence for the introduction of iron technology into the region. We suggest that the difference in these settlement histories is a result of differential access to stable water resources during a period of weakening and fluctuating monsoon across a generally arid landscape. Here, we describe well-dated, integrated chronological, archaeobotanical, archaeozoological and archaeological survey datasets from the Sanganakallu-Kupgal site complex that together demonstrate an intensification of settlement, subsistence and craft production on local hilltops prior to almost complete abandonment ca. 1200 cal. BC. Although the southern Deccan region as a whole may have witnessed demographic increase, as well as subsistence and cultural continuity, at this time, this broader pattern of continuity and resilience is punctuated by local examples of abandonment and mobility driven by an increasing practical and political concern with water

Modelling the Geographical Origin of Rice Cultivation in Asia Using the Rice Archaeological Database

We have compiled an extensive database of archaeological evidence for rice across Asia, including 400 sites from mainland East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia. This dataset is used to compare several models for the geographical origins of rice cultivation and infer the most likely region(s) for its origins and subsequent outward diffusion. The approach is based on regression modelling wherein goodness of fit is obtained from power law quantile regressions of the archaeologically inferred age versus a least-cost distance from the putative origin(s). The Fast Marching method is used to estimate the least-cost distances based on simple geographical features. The origin region that best fits the archaeobotanical data is also compared to other hypothetical geographical origins derived from the literature, including from genetics, archaeology and historical linguistics. The model that best fits all available archaeological evidence is a dual origin model with two centres for the cultivation and dispersal of rice focused on the Middle Yangtze and the Lower Yangtze valleys

Pathways of Rice Diversification across Asia

The archaeology of rice has made important methodological advances over the past decade that have contributed new data on the domestication process, spread and ecology of cultivation. Growing evidence from spikelet bases indicates that non-shattering, domesticated forms evolved gradually in the Yangtze basin and that there were at least two distinct processes around the Middle Yangtze region pre-dating 6000 BC, and the in the Lower Yangtze region between 6000 and 4000 BC. Early rice cultivation in these areas was based on wet field ecologies, in contrast to rainfed rice that is indicated among the earliest systems in India. When rice first spread north it was not entirely suited to shorter temperate summer growth seasons, and we are able to infer from high levels of apparently green-harvested spikelets that genetic adaptations to temperate conditions evolved after 2000 BC. When rice first spread south, to mainland Southeast Asia, after 2500 BC, it was grown in rainfed, dry ecologies that were less labour- demanding and less-productive. More productive and intensive irrigated rice then redeveloped in Southeast Asia around 2000 years ago, supporting growing population densities and social complexity

Charred pummelo peel, historical linguistics and other tree crops: Approaches to framing the historical context of early Citrus cultivation in East, South and Southeast Asia

Today Citrus are widespread and well-known nearly everywhere, but they derive from a complex and poorly documented series of domestication episodes and hybridization events focused on tropical South and Southeast Asia. While all these fruits derive from somewhere in the area spanning from northeastern India to South China and Southeast Asia, there is no firm evidence for precisely where or when. The present paper will attempt to offer an updated assessment of the evidence for three distinct g..