Revisiting the concept of the ‘Neolithic Founder Crops’ in southwest Asia

Zohary and Hopf coined the term ‘founder crops’ to refer to a specific group of eight plants, namely three cereals (einkorn, emmer and barley), four legumes (lentil, pea, bitter vetch and chickpea), and a fibre/oil crop (flax), that founded early Neolithic agriculture in southwest Asia. Zohary considered these taxa as the first cultivated and domesticated species, as well as those that agricultural communities exploited and eventually spread to Europe and other regions. As a result, these eight species soon become the hallmark of the Neolithic plant-based subsistence. However, the ‘founder crops’ concept was defined at the end of the 1980s, when the development of agriculture was considered a rapid event, and therefore, terms like domestication, agriculture and plant cultivation were used interchangeably in the literature. The aim of this paper is thus to revisit concept of the ‘Neolithic founder crops’. Through a critical review of the archaeobotanical evidence gathered in the last 40 years, we evaluate the relative contribution of the ‘eight founder crop’ species to the plant-based subsistence across different periods of the southwest Asian Neolithic. We conclude that multiple groups of ‘founder’ species could be defined depending on whether one seeks to represent the most exploited plants of the Neolithic period, the first cultivated and domesticated crops, or the species that agricultural communities cultivated and eventually spread to Europe. Improved understanding of Neolithic plant-based subsistence in general, and agriculture in particular, will be attained by moving beyond conventional narratives and exploring the evolutionary history of plants other than the original ‘founder’ species.Funding was provided by H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (840228) and Juan de la Cierva –Incorporación- Fellowship (IJC2019-039647-I)

La explotación de las plantas y los inicios de la agricultura en el Próximo Oriente: 20 años de investigación arqueobotánica

Este trabajo aborda el desarrollo de la investigación arqueobotánica en el Próximo Oriente en las dos últimas décadas. El artículo se centra en los avances conseguidos en el estudio de la explotación de las plantas en periodos pre-agrarios así como en los orígenes de la agricultura. Se discuten los principales yacimientos paleolíticos y epipaleolíticos en los que se documenta el uso de las plantas, y se abordan temas como el cultivo pre-doméstico y la domesticación de las plantasThis paper deals with the development of Near Eastern archaeobotany during the past two decades. It focuses on the advances of the discipline, particularly on the progress made in pre-agrarian plant use and the origins of agriculture. The main Palaeolithic and Epipalaeolithic sites where plant use has been well attested are discussed while issues such as pre-domestic cultivation and plant domestication are also analyze

The Prehistory of Bread

Origins of bread have been associated with the development of farming communities that cultivated and domesticated cereals in the Fertile Crescent 10,000 years ago. However, recent discoveries show that bread was not a product of farming, but perhaps something which fueled it

Preliminary analysis of the Late Natufian ground stone from Shubayqa 1, Jordan

Shubayqa 1 is a newly identified early and late Natufian site in the harra desert of northeastern Jordan. In addition to buildings, and rich chipped stone, faunal, and botanical assemblages, the site has produced a large collection of ground stone tools. This paper presents the result of a preliminary study of the ground stone artefacts associated with the late Natufian phase. Results indicate that while the assemblage is overall very similar to other Natufian sites in the Mediterranean zone, there are also some notable differences. Although grinding rather than pounding tools appear to be more important at the site, many tools were seemingly involved in both grinding and pounding activities. We hypothesize that this dual function could be explained by the processing of rhizome tubers, which were found in abundance at the site, and which may have represented an important food source for the inhabitants. In addition, we argue that the relationship between ground stone tools and cereal processing has been overemphasized and the processing of other plant food resources, in this case tubers could have been equally significant. While the processing of plant foods was one function, many tools are also associated with pigment stains, suggesting that they were involved in the processing of non-vegetal matter

Archaeobotanical evidence reveals the origins of bread 14,400 years ago in northeastern Jordan.

The origins of bread have long been associated with the emergence of agriculture and cereal domestication during the Neolithic in southwest Asia. In this study we analyze a total of 24 charred food remains from Shubayqa 1, a Natufian hunter-gatherer site located in northeastern Jordan and dated to 14.6-11.6 ka cal BP. Our finds provide empirical data to demonstrate that the preparation and consumption of bread-like products predated the emergence of agriculture by at least 4,000 years. The interdisciplinary analyses indicate the use of some of the "founder crops" of southwest Asian agriculture (e.g., Triticum boeoticum, wild einkorn) and root foods (e.g., Bolboschoenus glaucus, club-rush tubers) to produce flat bread-like products. The available archaeobotanical evidence for the Natufian period indicates that cereal exploitation was not common during this time, and it is most likely that cereal-based meals like bread become staples only when agriculture was firmly established

Identifying the chaîne opératoire of club-rush (Bolboschoenus glaucus (Lam.) S.G.Sm) tuber exploitation during the Early Natufian in the Black Desert (northeastern Jordan)

Club-rush (Bolboschoenus spp. (Asch.) Palla) is one of the most common edible wild plant taxa found at Epipaleolithic and Neolithic sites in southwest Asia. At the Early Natufian site of Shubayqa 1 (Black Desert, Jordan) thousands of club-rush rhizome-tuber remains and hundreds of fragments of prepared meals were found. The evidence indicated that the underground storage organs of this plant were recurrently used as a source of food 14,600 years ago. To determine how Early Natufian communities gathered, processed and transformed club-rush tubers into food, we designed an interdisciplinary study that combined experimental archaeology, archaeobotany, and ground and chipped stone tool analyses. We conducted more than 50 specific experiments over three years, and based on the experimental materials produced we inferred that 1) the best season for club-rush rhizome-tuber collection in the region was spring-summer time; 2) that the primary method to harvest the plant would have been uprooting; and 3) that the most efficient approaches to obtain perfectly peeled and clean rhizome-tubers could have entailed drying, roasting and gentle grinding of the tubers. Overall, our work provides important information to reconstruct the chaîne opératoire for club-rush tuber exploitation in the past. The experimental data and modern reference datasets allow us to interpret the archaeological material found at Shubayqa 1, and start identifying some of the activities that Natufian communities in the Black Desert undertook in relation to the exploitation of this particular source of food.Funding to carry out the experiments described in this paper was provided by the H.P. Mindefondet for Dansk Palæstinaforskning, Ingeniør Svend G. Fiedler og Hustrus legat til fremme af botanisk og arkæologisk forskning, the Danish Institute in Damascus, and the “Changing Foodways Project” granted by the Danish council for Independent Research (grant nos. DFF-4001-00068, DFF-801-00133B) to Dr. T. Richter, University of Copenhagen. Permission to conduct excavations at Shubayqa 1 was granted to Dr. T. Richter under license agreement with the Department of Antiquities of Jordan. Data analyses, interpretation and writing were carried out under A. Arranz-Otaegui’s Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (“FOUNDERS”, MSCAIF grant no. 840228) and Juan de la Cierva Incorporación grant (IJC2019-039647-I). Ingeniør Svend G. Fiedler og Hustrus legat til fremme af botanisk og arkæologisk forskning and the Danish Institute in Damascus provided additional funding for ground stone analysis conducted by P. N. Pedersen. Note that the funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. We also want to thank Department of Antiquities of Jordan, the Qasr Burqu’ staff, and several members of the Shubayqa Archaeological Project, including T. Richter, A. Shakaiteer, A. Ruter, L. Yeomans, and M. Bangsborg Thuessen among many others, for helping us in the various stages of the work over these years

Landscape transformations at the dawn of agriculture in southern Syria (10.7–9.9 ka cal. BP): plant-specific responses to the impact of human activities and climate change

In southwest Asia, the accelerated impact of human activities on the landscape has often been linked to the development of fully agricultural societies during the middle and late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) period (around 10.2–7.9 ka cal. BP). This work contributes to the debate on the environmental impact of the so-called Neolitisation process by identifying the climatic and anthropogenic factors that contributed to change local and regional vegetation at the time when domesticated plants appeared and developed in southern Syria (around 10.7–9.9 ka cal. BP). In this work a multidisciplinary analysis of plant microremains (pollen and phytoliths) and macroremains (wood charcoal) is carried out along with stable carbon isotope discrimination of wood charcoals in an early PPNB site (Tell Qarassa North, west of the Jabal al-Arab area). Prior to 10.5 ka cal. BP, the results indicate a dynamic equilibrium in the local and regional vegetation, which comprised woodland-steppe, Mediterranean evergreen oak-woodlands, wetland vegetation and coniferous forests. Around 10.5–9.9 ka cal. BP, the elements that regulated the vegetation system changed, resulting in reduced proportions of arboreal cover and the spread of cold-tolerant and wetlands species. Our data show that reinforcing interaction between the elements of the anthropogenic (e.g. herding, fire-related activities) and climatic systems (e.g. temperature, rainfall) contributed to the transformation of early Holocene vegetation during the emergence of fully agricultural societies in southern Syria