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)

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

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 Use of Dung as Fuel: An Ethnographic Example and an Archaeological Application

Modern plant use and garbage disposal practices in an Iranian village were observed in order to provide a framework for the interpretation of plant remains from ancient Malyan, a third millennium B.C. urban center in southern Iran. The ethnoarchaeological model suggested that many carbonized seeds originate in dung cake fuel. By applying this proposition to the archaeobotanical material from Malyan, it was possible to corroborate the evidence provided by the independent charcoal analysis for progressive deforestation during the third millennium

What Mean These Seeds: A Comparative Approach to Archaeological Seed Analysis

Since uncharred seeds recovered from archaeological deposits may be modern intrusions, researchers must evaluate each uncharred seed assemblage before assigning archaeological significance to it. When depositional circumstances are established, seed remains can yield primary data about diet, farming practices, and the spread of imported cultigens. Three uncharred seed assemblages are evaluated—one from Morven (Princeton, New Jersey) and two from the Calvert site (Annapolis, Maryland). The Morven seeds are modern. Seeds from a dry crawl space at the Calvert site probably date to the late 18th century, but rodent disturbance could have introduced more recent materials. Waterlogged seeds from a sealed 18th century well most securely reflect 18th century debris

Food, Fodder, or Fuel?: Harvesting the Secrets of Ancient Seeds

When I was in Southern Iraq in the 1970s, I collected charred woods and seed plant remains from the ancient city of Anshan, today’s Malyan. Although charcoal was plentiful, there were not many com­pared with other sites in the Near East. But as with those other sites, the seeds I did find included a high proportion of wild and weedy types. Yet Malyan was the capital of an ancient agricultural civilization, where wheat and barley had been cultivated for thou­sands of years. Why were there so many seeds of wild, nonfood plants? Even the cultigens were hard to explain