Review of Plants and Humans in the Near East and the Caucasus: Ancient and Traditional Uses of Plants as Food and Medicine, a Diachronic Ethnobotanical Review (2 vols)

Review of Plants and Humans in the Near East and the Caucasus: Ancient and Traditional Uses of Plants as Food and Medicine, a Diachronic Ethnobotanical Review (2 vols). Vol. 1: The Landscapes. The Plants: Ferns and Gymnosperms. Vol. 2: The Plants: Angiosperms. Diego Rivera Núñez, Gonzalo Matilla Séiquer, Concepción Obón, Francisco Alcaraz Ariza. 2011. Ediciones de la Unverisdad de Murcia. Pp. 1056. EUR 23.76 (paperback). ISBN 978-84-15463-07-08 (2 vols.), 978-84-15463-05-4 (vol. 1), 978-84-15463-06-1 (vol. 2)

Paleoethnobotanical Evidence for Deforestation in Ancient Iran: A Case Study of Urban Malyan

Plant remains from archaeological sites can provide information about the ancient environment. However, these remains should be considered archaeological artifacts, filtered through human culture. Adequate interpretation is only possible, and is indeed enriched, by taking the cultural practices of human populations into account. This approach is applied to archaeobotanical materials from Malyan, a fourth to second millennium B.C. site in Fars province, Iran, where there is archaeological evidence for population increase, growing complexity of settlement organization, and technological changes. Clearance of the ancient woodland in the vicinity of Maly an, and concomitant changes in the choice of fuel woods, can account for the observed changes in the proportions of woody taxa found during excavation. In particular, it appears that as the local poplar and juniper were removed, wood of the more distant oak forest was used. Deforestation was a result of a growing population\u27s fuel demands for domestic and technological-especially metallurgical-purposes

The Aspalathus Caper

Aspalathus, a plant mentioned in Pliny the Elder\u27s Natural History, Dioscorides\u27 De Materia Medica, Theophrastus\u27 Enquiry into Plants, and Ecclesiasticus is most probably caper (Capparis sp.). It has an Akkadian linguistic cognate, supālu. Ethnobotanical, archaeobotanical, and linguistic evidence show that this plant has played a role in the ancient, but ongoing cultural tradition in the Near East

Paleoethnobotanical Research in Khuzestan

Khuzestan has one of the most detailed and well documented archaeological sequences in the Near East, thanks to years of excavation and survey by many researchers. This work has led to some understanding of political, economic, and social life in southwestern Iran from the time of the early villages to that of the early states and the historic empires. Over the millennia, agriculture and pastoralism formed the economic basis of the region. But ecological and economic relationships were by no means static, for the people of southwestern Iran transformed their environment even as they built their civilizations. Paleoethnobotany has the potential to offer unique insights into the agricultural and pastoral economies of ancient Khuzestan, and can provide a case study of the long-term interrelationships between environmental, economic and social conditions

Gordion: Managing an Open-Air Archaeological Site as a Garden

Vegetation cover is managed to enhance the preservation of the archaeological ruins at Gordion, Turkey. We use our knowledge of the habits and growth cycles of the native vegetation to determine which plants should be encouraged or discouraged to grow in the excavated. For the surfaces of tumuli and unexcavated settlement mounds, minimal intervention can have dramatic results for remarkably little effort, and can be thought of as parkland. In particular, fencing to keep animals and children off the biggest mound allowed the vegetation cover to improve rapidly, so there is much less erosion. The excavated area with exposed architecture requires more active intervention and maintenance, as in a garden. The roots of some plants harm the standing structures, but others protect the ruins. In particular, we have planted the shallow-rooted perennial, Poa bulbosa, on the soft caps of the masonry walls exposed by excavation. With a metaphor and practice of open-air archaeological site as garden, we are not trying to restore the vegetation to some hypothetical earlier state. Rather, as a garden evolves and changes over the year and from year to year, the program at Gordion aims aims to use the resilience of the native vegetation to highlight and protect specific archaeological remains, like wall stubs, as well as the traces of ancient landscape that remain, and that have formed part of the viewshed and environment of all peoples since the tumuli were constructed over 2500 years ago

Archaeobotany: Macroremains

Palaeoethnobotany (or the shorter term, archaeo- botany) is the study of the direct interrelationships between humans and plants for whatever purpose as manifested in the archaeological record. 50 No matter what the time period or geographical area, plants played an important role in human culture. As primary data about the natural environment, land- use practices, diet, architecture, and trade in exotic plant materials, plant remains also reflect many as- pects of society, including social practices, such as eating, the organization of labor, and status differentiation

An Archaeobotanical Perspective on Environment, Plant Use, Agriculture, and Interregional Contact in South and Western Iran

Plant remains from archaeological sites reflect many aspects of the relationship between people, plants, and the environment in which they lived. Plant macroremains—seeds and wood that are visible without a microscope—can address a wide range of questions. The most basic include what crops were grown? What was used for fuel? Do any of the plants come from distant lands? Examples from fourth and third millennium deposits at Farukhabad, Sharafabad, Godin, and Malyan show that within the basic agricultural assemblage of wheat and barley shared by all sites, Sharafabad and Godin have stronger evidence of irrigation, lentil and flax, and Farukhabad appears to be more oriented toward pastoral production than the other sites. This article provides an introduction to archaeobotany using examples drawn from several fourth and third millennium sites in southern and western Iran. Human impact on the vegetation in Khuzestan and Fars appears to have been minimal at this time. A few unexpected finds (a date pit from cold-country/Sardsir Malyan suggests trade and rice at Parthian Susa may be evidence of a new crop that had long been cultivated in the Indus valley

Symbols of Fertility and Abundance in the Royal Cemetery at Ur, Iraq

Fertility and abundance are important themes of ancient Mesopotamian texts and images. The goddess Inanna and her consort Dumuzi personify these ideas in texts of the second millennium B.C.E. Excavated by Leonard Woolley in the 1920s, the Royal Cemetery at Ur dates to the mid third millennium B.C.E. Among the tombs, that of Queen Puabi yielded many ornaments of gold, carnelian, and lapis. Some of the pendants realistically depict identifiable animals. Others are more stylized depictions of clusters of apples, dates, and date inflorescences. Apples and dates are both associated with the goddess Inanna, who is associated with love and fertility. Twisted wire pendants in the same group of objects are not so readily identified. I propose here that the twisted wire pendants in the Puabi assemblage may literally represent rope, symbolically reference sheep, and narratively evoke the flocks of the shepherd Dumuzi. Pairing symbols of Inanna and Dumuzi evokes life in a place of death