Seeds of the extant Rogow. (Urticaceae) and endocarps of the extinct Wieliczk. (Potamogetonaceae) were recorded in diverse plant macrofossil assemblages recovered from organic sediments exposed during excavations at Saham Toney, Norfolk, UK. Aminostratigraphical data show the sediments were deposited during the Ipswichian (Last Interglacial) Stage. Palynological data indicates deposition during the pollen zone of the Ipswichian Stage-the latter part of pollen zone Ip IIb and Ip III. The records are noteworthy not only because they are the first in the British Pleistocene but also because of the geographical occurrences of these two species. is absent from the British flora today and has a modern range in central and eastern Europe (only extending as far west as north-east Germany and Denmark), while the extinct has only been recovered from Late Pleistocene sediments in Belarus, Lithuania, Poland and western Russia. The presence of along with other exotic species to the British Isles (e.g. L. and L., which today have central and southern ranges in Europe and in the case of occurs on other continents) may point to more continental conditions or warmer summer conditions during the second half of the Ipswichian Stage in southern Britain. No modern analogues occur in Britain for the assemblages recovered from Saham Toney. Evidence of colder winters or at least warmer summers at the time of deposition does not support the view that sea-level peaked in the zone of the Eemian Stage (correlated with the Ipswichian Stage) associated with increased oceanicity. Southern Britain would have been under the influence of the Atlantic Ocean and a degree of oceanicity is supported by the presence of two thermophilous taxa, and , in the pollen spectra from Saham Toney. Alternative explanations for the presence of these exotic species are that they were tolerating mild winters and cooler summers at the time of deposition or exploiting suitable micro-environments. The distribution of is probably an artefact of the distribution of expertise in the identification of fossil endocarps rather than having any palaeogeographic or palaeoclimatic significance. It is an extinct ancestor of the extant A. Benn, an eastern Asian pondweed. Its discovery in Britain encourages a reassessment of plant macrofossil assemblages from western Europe, which may lead to a consideration of the relationship between the Late Pleistocene vegetation of Europe and eastern Asia.

Tracking changes in biodiversity through time requires an understanding of the relationship between modern diversity and how this diversity is preserved in the fossil record. Fossil pollen is one way in which past vegetation diversity can be reconstructed. However, there is limited understanding of modern pollen-vegetation diversity relationships from biodiverse tropical ecosystems. Here, pollen (palynological) richness and diversity (Hill ) are compared with vegetation richness and diversity from forest and savannah ecosystems in the New World and Old World tropics (Neotropics and Palaeotropics). Modern pollen data were obtained from artificial pollen traps deployed in 1-ha vegetation study plots from which vegetation inventories had been completed in Bolivia and Ghana. Pollen counts were obtained from 15 to 22 traps per plot, and aggregated pollen sums for each plot were > 2,500. The palynological richness/diversity values from the Neotropics were moist evergreen forest = 86/6.8, semi-deciduous dry forest = 111/21.9, wooded savannah = 138/31.5, and from the Palaeotropics wet evergreen forest = 144/28.3, semi-deciduous moist forest = 104/4.4, forest-savannah transition = 121/14.1; the corresponding vegetation richness/diversity was 100/36.7, 80/38.7 and 71/39.4 (Neotropics), and 101/54.8, 87/45.5 and 71/34.5 (Palaeotropics). No consistent relationship was found between palynological richness/diversity, and plot vegetation richness/diversity, due to the differential influence of other factors such as landscape diversity, pollination strategy, and pollen source area. Palynological richness exceeded vegetation richness, while pollen diversity was lower than vegetation diversity. The relatively high global diversity of tropical vegetation was found to be reflected in the pollen rain.

Archaeobotanical evidence from southwest Asia is often interpreted as showing that the spectrum of wild plant foods narrowed during the origins of agriculture, but it has long been acknowledged that the recognition of wild plants as foods is problematic. Here, we systematically combine compositional and contextual evidence to recognise the wild plants for which there is strong evidence of their deliberate collection as food at pre-agricultural and early agricultural sites across southwest Asia. Through sample-by-sample analysis of archaeobotanical remains, a robust link is established between the archaeological evidence and its interpretation in terms of food use, which permits a re-evaluation of the evidence for the exploitation of a broad spectrum of wild plant foods at pre-agricultural sites, and the extent to which this changed during the development of early agriculture. Our results show that relatively few of the wild taxa found at pre- and early agricultural sites can be confidently recognised as contributing to the human diet, and we found no evidence for a narrowing of the plant food spectrum during the adoption of agriculture. This has implications for how we understand the processes leading to the domestication of crops, and points towards a mutualistic relationship between people and plants as a driving force during the development of agriculture.

The transition to urbanism has long focused on annual staple crops (cereals and legumes), perhaps at the expense of understanding other changes within agricultural practices that occurred between the end of the initial domestication period and urbanisation. This paper examines the domestication and role of fruit tree crops within urbanisation in both Western Asia and China, using a combination of evidence for morphological change and a database that documents both the earliest occurrence of tree fruit crops and their spread beyond their wild range. In Western Asia the domestication of perennial fruit crops likely occurs between 6500 bc and 3500 bc, although it accompanies a shift in location from that of the earliest domestications within the Fertile Crescent to Mesopotamia, where the earliest urban societies arose. For China, fruit-tree domestication dates between ca 4000 and 2500 bc, commencing after millet domestication and rice domestication in Northern and Southern China, respectively, but within the period that led up to the urban societies that characterised the Longshan period in the Yellow River basin and the Liangzhu Culture in the Lower Yangtze. These results place the domestication of major fruit trees between the end of the domestication of staple annual crops and the rise of urbanism. On this basis it is argued that arboriculture played a fundamental role within the re-organisation of existing land use, shifting the emphasis from short-term returns of cereal crops into longer term investment in the developing agricultural landscape in both Western and East Asia. In this respect perennial tree crops can be placed alongside craft specialisation, such as metallurgy and textiles, in the formation of urban centres and the shaping the organisational administration that accompanied the rise of urbanism.

The limited availability of historical and archaeological evidence means that much is still unknown about the development of Sami reindeer herding in Fennoscandia in both the recent and more distant past. To address this problem, high-resolution palynological analyses, C and Pb dating were undertaken on two adjacent (<25 m apart) peat profiles collected at a recently abandoned reindeer gathering pen () near Jokkmokk (~66.6°N, 19.8°E) in the boreal forest of northern Sweden. The aim was to assess the impact of Sami reindeer herding on the local environment through a study of pollen, coprophilous fungal spores, microscopic charcoal and sedimentology. The samples collected from within an annex to the indicate cycles of use and abandonment of the pen on a multi-decadal timescale between ~ad 1800-2008, most obviously in the coprophilous fungal spore archive. The pattern and timing of these cycles confirm events previously known only from oral histories. Although the local pollen assemblage zones associated with the phasing of activity were reproducible in a second peat core beyond the boundary of the , the coprophilous fungal spore signal in this paired profile was much less distinctive, possibly due to the typically shorter dispersal distances for these microfossils in comparison to pollen grains.

The functional ecology of arable weeds provides a way of comparing present-day and past farming regimes. This paper presents the R package WeedEco, an open-source resource which allows users to compare their archaeobotanical dataset against three previously published arable weed models to understand fertility, disturbance or a combination of both. The package provides functions for data organisation, classification and visualisation, allowing users to enter raw archaeobotanical data, obtain trait values from the functional trait dataset, conduct discriminant analysis and plot the results against the relevant present-day model. Using data from the early medieval site of Stafford in the UK, the paper provides a detailed example of the use of the package, demonstrating its different functions, as well as how the results can be interpreted.

This paper presents an integrated methodology for the analysis of archaeological remains of cereal meals, based on scanning electronic microscopic analyses of microstructures of charred food fragments from Neolithic Çatalhöyük (Turkey). The remains of cereal foods as 'bread-like' or 'porridge-like' small charred lumps of various amalgamated plant materials are frequently recovered from Neolithic and later archaeological sites in southwest Asia and Europe. Cereal food remains have recently attracted interest because the identification of their plant contents, the forms of food that they represent and the methods used in their creation can provide unique information about ancient culinary traditions and routine food processing, preparation and cooking techniques. Here, we focus on three methodological aspects: (1) the analysis of their composition; (2) the analysis of their microstructure to determine preparation and cooking processes; (3) the comparison with experimental reference materials. Preliminary results are presented on the botanical composition and cooking processes represented by the charred cereal preparations found at Neolithic Çatalhöyük (Turkey), for example cereals processed into bread, dough and/or porridge.

The taxonomic resolution of palynological identification is determined by morphological criteria that are used to define pollen types. Different levels of taxonomic resolution are reached in palynology, depending on several factors such as the analyst's expertise, the palynological school, the aim of the study, the preservation of the pollen grains, the reference collections and the microscope facilities. Previous research has suggested that attaining pollen records with high taxonomic resolution is important to reconstruct correctly past land use and human impact. This is in turn central to disentangling past human activities from other drivers of long-term vegetation dynamics such as natural disturbance or climate variability. In this study, we assess the impact of taxonomic resolution on the indicative capacity of anthropogenic pollen types. To achieve this, we attribute the pollen types of sixteen sedimentary records, located along a latitudinal gradient spanning from Switzerland to Italy, to three levels of taxonomic resolution previously proposed at the European scale. Our results show that higher taxonomic resolution improves the identification of human impact by enhancing the indicative power of important pollen indicators widely used in the research field. Our results may contribute to the improvement of palynological reconstructions of land use and human impact by identifying key pollen types whose determination requires particular attention.

Knowledge about the vegetation history of Sardinia, the second largest island of the Mediterranean, is scanty. Here, we present a new sedimentary record covering the past ~ 8,000 years from Lago di Baratz, north-west Sardinia. Vegetation and fire history are reconstructed by pollen, spores, macrofossils and charcoal analyses and environmental dynamics by high-resolution element geochemistry together with pigment analyses. During the period 8,100-7,500 cal bp, when seasonality was high and fire and erosion were frequent, and woodlands dominated the coastal landscape. Subsequently, between 7,500 and 5,500 cal bp, seasonality gradually declined and thermo-mediterranean woodlands with and partially replaced communities under diminished incidence of fire. After 5,500 cal bp, evergreen oak forests expanded markedly, erosion declined and lake levels increased, likely in response to increasing (summer) moisture availability. Increased anthropogenic fire disturbance triggered shrubland expansions (e.g. and ) around 5,000-4,500 cal bp. Subsequently around 4,000-3,500 cal bp evergreen oak-olive forests expanded massively when fire activity declined and lake productivity and anoxia reached Holocene maxima. Land-use activities during the past 4,000 years (since the Bronze Age) gradually disrupted coastal forests, but relict stands persisted under rather stable environmental conditions until ca. 200 cal bp, when agricultural activities intensified and and were planted to stabilize the sand dunes. Pervasive prehistoric land-use activities since at least the Bronze Age Nuraghi period included the cultivation of , and after 3,500-3,300 cal bp, and after 2,500 cal bp. We conclude that restoring less flammable native and forest communities would markedly reduce fire risk and erodibility compared to recent forest plantations with flammable non-native trees (e.g. , ) and xerophytic shrubland (e.g. , ).

Observing natural vegetation dynamics over the entire Holocene is difficult in Central Europe, due to pervasive and increasing human disturbance since the Neolithic. One strategy to minimize this limitation is to select a study site in an area that is marginal for agricultural activity. Here, we present a new sediment record from Lake Svityaz in northwestern Ukraine. We have reconstructed regional and local vegetation and fire dynamics since the Late Glacial using pollen, spores, macrofossils and charcoal. Boreal forest composed of and with continental and established in the region around 13,450 cal bp, replacing an open, steppic landscape. The first temperate tree to expand was at 11,800 cal bp, followed by , and ca. 1,000 years later. Fire activity was highest during the Early Holocene, when summer solar insolation reached its maximum. and established at ca. 6,000 cal bp, coinciding with the first indicators of agricultural activity in the region and a transient climatic shift to cooler and moister conditions. Human impact on the vegetation remained initially very low, only increasing during the Bronze Age, at ca. 3,400 cal bp. Large-scale forest openings and the establishment of the present-day cultural landscape occurred only during the past 500 years. The persistence of highly diverse mixed forest under absent or low anthropogenic disturbance until the Early Middle Ages corroborates the role of human impact in the impoverishment of temperate forests elsewhere in Central Europe. The preservation or reestablishment of such diverse forests may mitigate future climate change impacts, specifically by lowering fire risk under warmer and drier conditions.

Phytoliths preserved in soils and sediments can be used to provide unique insights into past vegetation dynamics in response to human and climate change. Phytoliths can reconstruct local vegetation in terrestrial soils where pollen grains typically decay, providing a range of markers (or lack thereof) that document past human activities. The ca. 6 million km of Amazonian forests have relatively few baseline datasets documenting changes in phytolith representation across gradients of human disturbances. Here we show that phytolith assemblages vary on local scales across a gradient of (modern) human disturbance in tropical rainforests of Suriname. Detrended correspondence analysis showed that the phytolith assemblages found in managed landscapes (shifting cultivation and a garden), unmanaged forests, and abandoned reforesting sites were clearly distinguishable from intact forests and from each other. Our results highlight the sensitivity and potential of phytoliths to be used in reconstructing successional trajectories after site usage and abandonment. Percentages of specific phytolith morphotypes were also positively correlated with local palm abundances derived from UAV data, and with biomass estimated from MODIS satellite imagery. This baseline dataset provides an index of likely changes that can be observed at other sites that indicate past human activities and long-term forest recovery in Amazonia.

Cannabis grains are frequently reported from archaeological sites in Asia, and hypothesized centers of origins are China and Central Asia. Chinese early cannabis remains are often interpreted as evidence of hemp fabric production, in line with early textual evidence describing ritualistic hemp cloth use and hemp cultivation as a grain crop. Modern measurements on cannabis varieties show distinct sizes between fibre or oil/fibre and psychoactive varieties, the former having larger seeds on average than the latter. This paper reviews the current macro-botanical evidence for cannabis across East, Central and South Asia and builds a comparative framework based on modern cannabis seed measurements to help identify cannabis use in the past, through the metric analysis of archaeologically preserved seeds. Over 800 grains of cannabis were retrieved from the 2008 excavation of Haimenkou, Yunnan, Southwest China, dating to between 1650 and 400 bc. These are compared with other known archaeological cannabis and interpreted through the metric framework. This offers a basis for exploration of the seed morphometrics potential to infer cannabis cultivation and diversification in uses. At Haimenkou, cannabis seeds size mostly plot in the range of overlapping psychoactive/fibre types; we therefore suggest that the cannabis assemblage from Haimenkou is indicative of a crop beginning to undergo evolution from its early domesticated form towards a diversified crop specialized for alternative uses, including larger oilseed/fibre adapted varieties.

This paper asks whether we can identify a recurrent domestication syndrome for tree crops (fruits, nuts) and track archaeologically the evolution of domestication of fruits from woody perennials. While archaeobotany has made major contributions to documenting the domestication process in cereals and other annual grains, long-lived perennials have received less comparative attention. Drawing on examples from across Eurasia, comparisons suggest a tendency for the larger domesticated fruits to contain seeds that are proportionally longer, thinner and with more pointed (acute to attenuated) apices. Therefore, although changes in flavour, such as increased sweetness, are not recoverable, seed metrics and shape provide an archaeological basis for tracking domestication episodes in fruits from woody perennials. Where available, metrical data suggest length increases, as well as size diversification over time, with examples drawn from the Jomon of Japan (), Neolithic China () and the later Neolithic of the Near East () to estimate rates of change. More limited data allow us to also compare Mesoamerica avocado () and western Pacific sp. nuts and sp. fruits. Data from modern Indian jujube () are also considered in relation to seed length:width trends in relation to fruit contents (flesh proportion, sugar content). Despite the long generation time in tree fruits, rates of change in their seeds are generally comparable to rates of phenotypic evolution in annual grain crops, suggesting that gradual evolution via unconscious selection played a key role in initial processes of tree domestication, and that this had begun in the later Neolithic once annual crops had been domesticated, in both west and east Asia.

Cores and trenches drilled or dug in religious and secular buildings in the hilltop town of Bergamo (northern Italy) were investigated by means of micro/macrobotanical and pedochemical analysis to unravel the cultural vegetation history of the area during ca. seven centuries across the Bronze-Iron Ages. We explore the predictive power of biological proxies, nutrients, and coupled C datings to reveal early phases of human settlement and activity in a modern urban context with low visibility and difficult accessibility. Our records suggest that a farming centre was active on the Bergamo hilltop as early as the 15th century bc. Crop and animal husbandry reached a high point between the 11th-8th century bc. Plant and biogeochemical proxies predict extensive and diversified cereal cropping, flax and grapevine cultivation, as well as herd stalling at a watering pond, free range livestock growing in woodlands, and pastoralism, shown by hay making and overgrazing evidence. The suggestive hypothesis of carding wool is mentioned but is currently untenable. Furthermore, we identified a possible phase of abandonment starting from the 8th century bc, to be further investigated, and in agreement with archaeological data suggesting settlement decline in the 8th-6th century bc. Our research highlights the dedication to pastoralism of the Bergamo hill since prehistoric times. The settlement position was strategic for pastoralists to exploit biological and water resources in space, season and elevation, i.e. from the plain to higher Alpine pastures. Ethnographic examples and Middle Age written sources strongly support this picture.

The two cultivated species of buckwheat, (common buckwheat) and (Tartary buckwheat) are Chinese domesticates whose origins are usually thought to lie in upland southwestern China, outside the major centres of agricultural origins associated with rice and millet. Synthesis of the macro- and microfossil evidence for buckwheat cultivation in China found just 26 records across all time periods, of which the majority were pollen finds. There are few or no identifying criteria distinguishing and for any sample type. The earliest plausibly agricultural occurs in northern China from the mid 6th millennium cal bp. The archaeobotanical record requires reconciliation with biogeographic and genetic inferences of a southwestern Chinese origin for buckwheat. Scrutiny of the genetic data indicates limitations related to sampling, molecular markers and analytical approaches. Common buckwheat may have been domesticated at the range margins of its wild progenitor before its cultivation expanded in the north, mediated by changing ranges of wild species during the Holocene and/or by cultural exchange or movement of early agriculturalists between southwest China, the Chengdu Plain and the southern Loess Plateau. Buckwheat probably became a pan-Eurasian crop by the 3rd millennium cal bp, with the pattern of finds suggesting a route of westward expansion via the southern Himalaya to the Caucasus and Europe.

The present study aims to reconstruct vegetation development, climate changes and human impact using an ombrotrophic peat core from the Coltrondo bog in the eastern Italian Alps. Evidence from pollen, micro-charcoal, major and trace elements, and lead isotopes from this 7,900 years old peat deposit has been combined, and several climatic oscillations and phases of human impact detected. In particular, human presence was recorded in this area of the Alps from about 650 cal bc, with periods of increased activity at the end of the Middle Ages and also at the end of the 19th century, as evidenced by both human-related pollen and the increase in micro-charcoal particles. The enrichment factor of lead (EF) increased since the Roman period and the Middle Ages, suggesting mainly mining activities, whereas the advent of industrialization in the 20th century is marked by the highest EF values in the whole core. The EF data are strongly supported by the Pb/Pb values and these are in general agreement with the historical information available. Therefore, the multi-proxy approach used here has allowed detection of climatic events and human impact patterns in the Comelico area starting from the Iron Age, giving new insights into the palaeoecology as well as the course of the interaction among humans, climate and ecosystems in this part of the eastern Italian Alps.

This paper presents a preliminary study combining macrobotanical and phytolith analyses to explore crop processing at archaeological sites in Haryana and Rajasthan, northwest India. Current understanding of the agricultural strategies in use by populations associated with South Asia's Indus Civilisation (3200-1900 bc) has been derived from a small number of systematic macrobotanical studies focusing on a small number of sites, with little use of multi-proxy analysis. In this study both phytolith and macrobotanical analyses are used to explore the organisation of crop processing at five small Indus settlements with a view to understanding the impact of urban development and decline on village agriculture. The differing preservation potential of the two proxies has allowed for greater insights into the different stages of processing represented at these sites: with macrobotanical remains allowing for more species-level specific analysis, though due to poor chaff presentation the early stages of processing were missed; however these early stages of processing were evident in the less highly resolved but better preserved phytolith remains. The combined analyses suggests that crop processing aims and organisation differed according to the season of cereal growth, contrary to current models of Indus Civilisation labour organisation that suggest change over time. The study shows that the agricultural strategies of these frequently overlooked smaller sites question the simplistic models that have traditionally been assumed for the time period, and that both multi-proxy analysis and rural settlements are deserving of further exploration.

The introduction of wheat into central China is thought to have been one of the significant contributions of interactions between China and Central Asia which began in the 3rd millennium bc. However, only a limited number of Neolithic wheat grains have been found in central China and even fewer have been directly radiocarbon dated, making the date when wheat was adopted in the region and its role in subsistence farming uncertain. Based on systematic archaeobotanical data and direct dating of wheat remains from the Xiazhai site in central China, as well as a critical review of all reported discoveries of Neolithic and Bronze Age wheat from this region, we conclude that many wheat finds are intrusive in Neolithic contexts. We argue that the role of wheat in the subsistence of the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age of central China was minimal, and that wheat only began to increase in its subsistence role in the later Bronze Age during the Zhou dynasty after ca. 1000 bc.

This investigation combines two independent methods of identifying crop growing conditions and husbandry practices-functional weed ecology and crop stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis-in order to assess their potential for inferring the intensity of past cereal production systems using archaeobotanical assemblages. Present-day organic cereal farming in Haute Provence, France features crop varieties adapted to low-nutrient soils managed through crop rotation, with little to no manuring. Weed quadrat survey of 60 crop field transects in this region revealed that floristic variation primarily reflects geographical differences. Functional ecological weed data clearly distinguish the Provence fields from those surveyed in a previous study of intensively managed spelt wheat in Asturias, north-western Spain: as expected, weed ecological data reflect higher soil fertility and disturbance in Asturias. Similarly, crop stable nitrogen isotope values distinguish between intensive manuring in Asturias and long-term cultivation with minimal manuring in Haute Provence. The new model of cereal cultivation intensity based on weed ecology and crop isotope values in Haute Provence and Asturias was tested through application to two other present-day regimes, successfully identifying a high-intensity regime in the Sighisoara region, Romania, and low-intensity production in Kastamonu, Turkey. Application of this new model to Neolithic archaeobotanical assemblages in central Europe suggests that early farming tended to be intensive, and likely incorporated manuring, but also exhibited considerable variation, providing a finer grained understanding of cultivation intensity than previously available.

The R package CropPro is an open-access resource to classify archaeobotanical samples as products and by-products of different stages of the crop processing sequence for large-seeded cereal and pulse crops in south west Asia, Europe and other Mediterranean regions. It builds on ethnographic research and analysis conducted by Jones (Plants and ancient man: studies in palaeoethnobotany. Balkema, Rotterdam, pp 43-61, 1984), (J Archaeol Sci 14:311-323, 1987), (Circaea 6:91-96, 1990) and a modified method by Charles (Environ Archaeol 1:111-122, 1998). CropPro provides functions, which allow users to construct triplots, to conduct discriminant analysis comparing archaeobotanical samples with ethnographic crop processing stages and to plot the discriminant analysis results. This paper provides two worked examples of the use of CropPro: the early medieval site of Stafford in the UK and the Bronze Age site of Tell Brak in Syria. These examples illustrate the use of the package for identifying crop-processing stages, and for assessing the relevance of taphonomic pathways other than crop processing.