Plant Economy in the Westernmost Territory of the Roman State Through Waste: The Wet Site of O Areal (Vigo, Spain)

The Roman economy of the Iberian Peninsula has habitually been characterised in terms of prestige goods and economic activities such as trade, mining and metallurgy. The analysis of plant-based foods –less prestigious but more essential in everyday life– has commonly been marginalised in state-of-the-art reviews. The O Areal saltworks is exceptional in terms of the large number of organic materials it preserves, and the excellent state of that preservation. After its abandonment (end of the 3rd/4th century AD), the saltworks was briefly used as a dumping ground for the surrounding area. The site's archaeobotanical remains, preserved under anoxic, waterlogged conditions, consist of the building materials used at the saltworks, tools and other artefacts, organic objects employed in activities such as fishing, and refuse. The assemblage suggests a wide diversity of species to have been introduced into northwestern Iberia during the Roman Period, including the mulberry, peach, fig, plum, grapevine, and melon. The notable presence of other edible fruit species that normally grew wild during this period, such as chestnut, walnut, stone pine, and cherry trees, might be related to the start of their cultivation.

X-ray computed tomography (CT) and ESEM-EDS investigations of unusual subfossilized juniper cones

Recent investigations of a Greco-Roman site at Sais have provided well-preserved archaeobotanical remains within a pile of metal fragments. The remains are compared with comparable modern taxa. The morphology and anatomy are studied using Light microscope (LM), Environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM) and X-ray computed tomography (CT). To investigate the preservation mode, Energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) analysis and elemental mapping are conducted. Results revealed that the archaeobotanical remains are exhibiting close affinity with modern juniper cones. Although, the studied archaeobotanical remains are buried for more than 2 millenniums, they underwent early stages of silicification and copper mineralization. These results are discussed in relation to other excavated objects in the find and to our knowledge and understanding of daily life in the Greco-Roman period.

The Kalaureia Excavation Project. A preliminary report of the work carried out in Area L between 2015 and 2018

The report presents a summary and preliminary discussion on the work carried out by the Swedish Institute at ancient Kalaureia between 2015 and 2018 in Area L. The excavations were focused on this area with the hopes of gaining a better understanding of the settlement which was situated south of the Sanctuary of Poseidon in antiquity. The excavations show that a large building was constructed probably around the middle of the 4th century BC in the western part of Area L. The full outline and functional use of the building has not yet been fully established but the building seems to have been in use in several subsequent phases. The excavated remains further suggest that dining activities were carried out in the southern part of the building. A stone laid feature (Feature 3) excavated immediately to the east, together with charcoal deposits, also provide indications of cooking in the 3rd century BC at least. The feature was, however, covered by the 2nd century BC when a new wall was constructed which seems to connect the building with a broader structural complex to the south. During this period parts of Area L seem to have been used for olive oil production, identifiable through archaeobotanical remains, multiple pithoi, and a press installation excavated in the central part of Area L. In the Late Hellenistic to Early Roman phase (either in the 1st century BC or 1st century AD) much of the building complex was again covered by a new construction fill, raising the level of the building.

Pip shape echoes grapevine domestication history

The pip, as the most common grapevine archaeological remain, is extensively used to document past viticulture dynamics. This paper uses state of the art morphological analyses to analyse the largest reference collection of modern pips to date, representative of the present-day diversity of the domesticated grapevine from Western Eurasia. We tested for a costructure between the form of the modern pips and the: destination use (table/wine), geographical origins, and populational labels obtained through two molecular approaches. Significant structuring is demonstrated for each of these cofactors and for the first time it is possible to infer properties of varieties without going through the parallel with modern varieties. These results provide a unique tool that can be applied to archaeological pips in order to reconstruct the spatio-temporal dynamics of grape diversity on a large scale and to better understand viticulture history. The models obtained were then used to infer the affiliations with archaeobotanical remains recovered in Mas de Vignoles XIV (Nîmes, France). The results show a twofold shift between the Late Iron Age and the Middle Ages, from table to wine grape varieties and from eastern to western origins which correlates with previous palaeogenomic results.

Qarakhanids on the Edge of the Bukhara Oasis: Archaeobotany of Medieval Paykend

The urban center of Paykend was an exchange node just off the main corridor of the Silk Road in the Bukhara Oasis on the edge of the hyperarid Kyzyl–Kum Desert. The city was occupied from the end of 4 century B.C.E. to the mid–12 century C.E.; our study focuses on the Qarakhanid period (C.E. 999 – 1211), the last imperial phase of urban occupation at Paykend before its abandonment. In this study, we present the results of an analysis of archaeobotanical remains recovered from a multifunction rabat, which appears to have comprised a domicile, military structure, center of commerce, and/or a caravanserai, a roadside inn for travelers. We shed light on how people adapted a productive economy to the local ecological constraints. By adding these data to the limited Qarakhanid archaeobotany from across Central Asia, we provide the first glimpses into cultivation, commerce, and consumption at a Silk Road trading town along the King’s Road, the central artery of ancient Eurasia.

Food and agriculture in Slavonia, Croatia, during the Late Middle Ages: the archaeobotanical evidence

This paper presents the results from archaeobotanical remains collected from ten medieval settlements and fort sites in the region of present-day Slavonia, Croatia. From the 12th century ad, Slavonia was part of the Kingdom of Hungary, although the region benefited from a certain amount of autonomy. Examining the archaeobotanical data from this period shows a diverse agricultural system, where crop fields, gardens, orchards, pastures and woodlands were all used to produce a range of cereals, fruits, nuts, vegetables and herbs, as well as fibre plants. The dataset is dominated by cereal remains, especially Triticum aestivum/durum (free-threshing wheat), Panicum miliaceum (broomcorn millet) and Secale cereale (rye). Vitis vinifera (grape pips) were the most common fruit recovered, which corresponds with the presence of vineyards and international trade in wine noted in the literature by the late Middle Ages. Also of significance was the recovery of Cannabis sativa (hemp) and Linum usitatissimum (flax), which suggest local cultivation, possibly for linen and hemp fibres, for oil or for medicinal purposes.

Accurate classification of fresh and charred grape seeds to the varietal level, using machine learning based classification method

Grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) currently includes thousands of cultivars. Discrimination between these varieties, historically done by ampelography, is done in recent decades mostly by genetic analysis. However, when aiming to identify archaeobotanical remains, which are mostly charred with extremely low genomic preservation, the application of the genomic approach is rarely successful. As a result, variety-level identification of most grape remains is currently prevented. Because grape pips are highly polymorphic, several attempts were made to utilize their morphological diversity as a classification tool, mostly using 2D image analysis technics. Here, we present a highly accurate varietal classification tool using an innovative and accessible 3D seed scanning approach. The suggested classification methodology is machine-learning-based, applied with the Iterative Closest Point (ICP) registration algorithm and the Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) technique. This methodology achieved classification results of 91% to 93% accuracy in average when trained by fresh or charred seeds to test fresh or charred seeds, respectively. We show that when classifying 8 groups, enhanced accuracy levels can be achieved using a "tournament" approach. Future development of this new methodology can lead to an effective seed classification tool, significantly improving the fields of archaeobotany, as well as general taxonomy.

A microbotanical and microwear perspective to plant processing activities and foodways at Neolithic Çatalhöyük

Çatalhöyük is a renowned archaeological site in central Anatolia, best known for its Neolithic occupation dated from 7100 to 6000 cal BC. The site received worldwide attention early on for its large size, well-preserved mudbrick architecture, and elaborate wall paintings. Excavations at the site over almost three decades have unearthed rich archaeobotanical remains and a diverse ground stone assemblage produced by what once was a vibrant farming community. The study presented here adds to our understanding of crops and plant processing at Çatalhöyük by integrating phytoliths and starch analyses on grinding implements found at three domestic contexts attributed to the Middle (6700–6500 cal BC) and Late (6500–6300 cal BC) period of occupation. Our results reveal a rich microbotanical assemblage that testifies the use of a wide range of geophytes and wild seasonal resources previously unknown at the site. Moreover, by comparing results from the microbotanical proxies and microscopic wear patterns on artefacts, we are also able to discern various plant processing practices the analysed artefacts were employed for. In sum, this work further expands our understanding of plants and crop processing activities performed by the inhabitants of Neolithic Çatalhöyük.

Earliest Evidence for Geophyte Use in North America: 11,500-Year-Old Archaeobotanical Remains from California's Santarosae Island

There is growing evidence for human use of geophytes long before the advent of agriculture. Rich in carbohydrates, geophytes were important in many coastal areas where protein-rich marine foods are abundant. On California's Channel Islands, scholars have long questioned how maritime peoples sustained themselves for millennia with limited plant resources. Recent research demonstrates that geophytes were heavily used on the islands for 10,000 years, and here we describe geophyte and other archaeobotanical remains from an approximately 11,500-year-old site on Santa Rosa Island. Currently the earliest evidence for geophyte consumption in North America, our data extend geophyte use on the Channel Islands by roughly 1,500 years and document a diverse and balanced economy for early Paleocoastal peoples. Experimental return rates for a key island geophyte support archaeological evidence that the corms of blue dicks (Dipterostemon capitatus) were a high-ranked staple resource throughout the Holocene.