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Accepted Paper:
Archaeobotany as long-term agricultural heritage-- exspanions and contractions of crops diversity over the long-term
Dorian Fuller
(University College London)
Paper short abstract:
Archaeobotany provides a long-term perspective on crop choices, crops that have been lost, largely forgotten, as well as past periods of agricultural diversification and de-diversification.
Paper long abstract:
The lost of crop diversity has been a recurrent feature of the agricultural long-term and has been punctuated by periods of increased crop diverisification. Archaeobotany has given us access to crop domestication and disappearances in prehistory, from north American Iva annua, to lost varieties of barley and foxtail millet in Sudan. It has also highlighted crops that were much more prominent and widespread in the past that have been largely forgotten, from Timopheev's wheat to Indian brown top millet. This raises questions about what the contributing factors are as to whether crops persist and expand or decline and disappear. As first step towards thinking about this we might consider what the chronological patterns in terms of agricultural diverisification and de-diversification. We will consider long-term crop diversity profiles for the Near East (~10,000 years), Nubia (~5000 years) and Southern India (~4000 years) to explore potential correlates to diversity trends.