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New Evidence of Lateglacial Cereal Cultivation at Abu Hureyra on The The Holocene 11,4 (2001) pp. 383–393 New evidence of Lateglacial cereal cultivation at Abu Hureyra on the Euphrates Gordon Hillman,1 Robert Hedges,2 Andrew Moore,3 Susan Colledge1 and Paul Pettitt2 (1Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 31–34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY, UK; 2Research Laboratory for Archaeology and History, University of Oxford, 6 Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3QJ, UK; 3Office of the Dean, College of Liberal Arts, Rochester Institute of Technology, 92 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, New York 14623–5604, USA) Received 1 August 2000; revised manuscript accepted 25 January 2001 Abstract: Hitherto, the earliest archaeological finds of domestic cereals in southwestern Asia have involved wheats and barleys dating from the beginning of the Holocene, 11–12000 calendar years ago. New evidence from the site of Abu Hureyra suggests that systematic cultivation of cereals in fact started well before the end of the Pleistocene – by at least 13000 years ago, and that rye was among the first crops. The evidence also indicates that hunter-gatherers at Abu Hureyra first started cultivating crops in response to a steep decline in wild plants that had served as staple foods for at least the preceding four centuries. The decline in these wild staples is attributable to a sudden, dry, cold, climatic reversal equivalent to the ‘Younger Dryas’ period. At Abu Hureyra, therefore, it appears that the primary trigger for the occupants to start cultivating caloric staples was climate change. It is these beginnings of cultivation in the late Pleistocene that gave rise to the integrated grain-livestock Neolithic farming systems of the early Holocene. Key words: Agricultural origins, cereal cultivation, hunter-gatherers, domestication, palaeoclimate, rye, Abu Hureyra, Euphrates, southwestern Asia, Lateglaical, early Holocene. Introduction lithic by a thousand years, and, for the moment, makes it the earliest known example of cultivation worldwide. (Note that all After more than two million years of obtaining food from the wild dates cited hereafter are in uncalibrated radiocarbon years before by gathering, hunting and scavenging, the development of farming the present – 14C yr BP.) propelled humankind into an entirely new trajectory. Worldwide, That this new evidence of early cultivation should come from the consequences for human society, demography, nutrition and the site of Abu Hureyra is no coincidence. So far, the site has ecology have been profound and often disastrous, and have proved unique in the detail of its continuous record of an in-situ moulded almost every aspect of modern life. transition from foraging to farming. It is also the first site to pro- Decades of archaeological research and some thousands of pub- vide persuasive evidence of the pressures which seemingly drove lications have been devoted to exploring when, where and why the already sedentary hunter-gatherers to start the energy-expens- the shift from foraging to farming occurred. It appears to have ive business of cultivating their caloric staples. The evidence happened independently and at different times in at least three further reveals that the initial cultigens included rye, a cereal not (and possibly six or more) parts of the world. Evidence for some previously numbered among the ‘founder crops’ of southwestern of the earliest farming activities has come from southwestern Asia Asia (Zohary and Hopf, 1993). Yet, despite the present uniqueness (the ‘Near East’). Indeed, new evidence presented here from the of Abu Hureyra, we anticipate that equally early evidence of anal- Near Eastern site of Abu Hureyra now pushes back the beginnings ogous events will eventually be recovered from other sites in the of the systematic cultivation of cereals to before the end of the Fertile Crescent. Pleistocene, to ෂ13000 years ago (= 11000 years before the present (BP) in uncalibrated radiocarbon years; Stuiver et al., 1998). This predates the hitherto accepted start of the local Neo- Arnold 2001 0959-6836(01)HL477RP Downloaded from hol.sagepub.com at Geographisches Institut on June 28, 2015 384 The Holocene 11 (2001) Existing evidence for the start of same species (then much more widespread than they are today); cultivation in southwestern Asia and modifier genes. Clearly, the germination of spontaneously shed, wild-type spikelets will also have slowed fixation Finds of domesticates (Willcox, 1999). The process of cereal domestication materially alters the mor- As regards the first of these factors that could have decelerated phology of the plants concerned, and, in the archaeological record, domestication, it is perhaps inevitable that crops were, indeed, the start of cultivation is traditionally dated from the first appear- harvested while partially immature, because crops that are still in ance of remains of crop plants which clearly reveal such changes their wild state ripen very unevenly, and unripe harvesting would in their morphology. Hitherto, the earliest remains of domesticates have offered the most efficient means of avoiding heavy grain- in southwestern Asia have all been wheats (Harris, 1998; Garrard, loss through spontaneous shattering. This reinforces the 1999): Tell Aswad in the Damascus Basin yielded charred probability that there was, indeed, a period of ‘pre-domestication remains of emmer wheat of apparently domestic type from levels cultivation’ when cultivated crops continued to retain their wild- dated to ෂ9800 14C yr BP (van Zeist and Bakker-Heeres, 1979); type, brittle-rachised ears. This period might have been quite brief, Iraq ed-Dubb in northwestern Jordan produced domestic emmer but it could also theoretically have lasted several centuries. The or einkorn wheat from deposits dated to ෂ10000 14CyrBP fixation of other classic ‘domestic’ features such as large, plump (Colledge, 1994); and Tell Mureybit on the Middle Euphrates pro- grains in place of the skinny wild-type grains should theoretically duced two specimens of domestic emmer and another domestic have taken somewhat longer. Certainly, at the early Neolithic site wheat from levels dated to 10200–10000 14C yr BP, together with of C¸ ayo¨nu¨, there was evidence that plump domestic-type grains two other domestic cereals of less certain date (van Zeist and probably did not emerge in local crops of emmer and einkorn Bakker-Heeres, 1986). Slightly later remains of domestic cereals until well after the fixation of semi-tough domestic rachis (van have been identified from sites such as Jericho in the Jordan Val- Zeist and de Roller, 1994). ley (Hopf, 1983), and from Cafer Ho¨yu¨k (de Moulins, 1997) and Yet, if cereal crops retained their wild-type morphology during C¸ ayo¨nu¨ (van Zeist and de Roller, 1994) in southeastern Turkey. the early stages of cultivation, how can we detect the point at However, the archaeobotanists who worked on these charred which cultivation first started? The archaeological evidence can remains stress that some of the grains could theoretically have come in at least four forms, including the following: trickled down from overlying, later levels, although at two of the (i) abrupt increases in remains of seeds of arable weeds sites the requisite overlying Neolithic levels are lacking. To be (‘segetals’) which cannot be explained by other forms of certain that the remains are of the same age as the levels where disturbance (Hillman and Davies, 1990b; 1992; Col- they were found, key specimens therefore need to be individually ledge, 1998); radiocarbon dated using accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). (ii) indications of the heavy use of particular food plants by settlements in areas where extensive stands of such plants Evidence of pre-domestication cultivation could not have grown in the wild; There is also evidence from southwest Asia of some cultivation (iii) shifts in specific patterns of wear on flint sickle-blades having begun prior to the first definite appearance of these dom- (e.g., Unger-Hamilton, 1989; but see also Anderson, esticates (for discussion of the definition of terms such as culti- 1992); vation, domestication and agriculture, see Harris, 1989; 1990). (iv) archaeological evidence of concentrations of large, seden- This is only to be expected, as domestic traits would not necessar- tary populations that would not have been supportable ily have developed immediately cereals were first taken into culti- from hunting and gathering alone. vation. It is worth considering briefly how these ‘domestic’ traits become manifest. It is on one or more of these bases that pre-domestication culti- The first crops were sown from seed gathered from wild stands vation has tentatively been suggested at several early sites (Figure and were thus morphologically of the wild type, with brittle ears 1). Thus Colledge’s re-processing of the data from van Zeist and that shattered at maturity thereby allowing the seed to be dissemi- his colleagues’ analyses of the plant remains from Mureybit on the nated. In the absence of conscious human intervention, the culti- Middle Euphrates ranging in date from the Late Epipalaeolithic vation of wild-type wheats, barleys and ryes would have started (Mesolithic) to early Neolithic (ෂ10600 to 8900 14C yr BP) sug- to select for mutant tough-eared phenotypes of domestic mor- gests that, despite the wild-type morphology of most of the cereal phology only when these sown wild-type crops began to be har- grains, the associated seed remains actually come from weeds of vested by sickle-reaping or uprooting, in place of the harvesting arable cultivation (Colledge, 1998). Willcox has concluded the by beating that was favoured by most of the hunter-gatherers of recent times who foraged wild grass-grain as food (Bohrer, 1991; Harlan, 1992; Wilke et al., 1972). Such selection would also gen- erally have required that the crops be sown on a new plot every year. Once sickle-reaping or uprooting was adopted, however, domestication in respect of the fixation of non-shattering (tough- rachised) ears in the crop population could theoretically have been complete well within a century (Hillman and Davies, 1990a).
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