Barely Surviving Or More Than Enough?

Lentjes & Zeiler edited by Groot, barely surviving or more than enough? How people produced or acquired their food in the past is one of the main questions in archaeology. Everyone needs food to survive, so the ways in which people managed to acquire it forms the very basis of human existence. Farming barely surviving or more than enough? was key to the rise of human sedentarism. Once farming moved beyond subsistence, and regularly produced a surplus, it supported the development of specialisation, speeded up the development of socio-economic as well as social complexity, the rise of towns and the development of city states. In short, studying food production is of critical importance in understanding how societies developed. Environmental archaeology often studies the direct remains of food or food processing, and is therefore well-suited to address this topic. What is more, a barely surviving or wealth of new data has become available in this field of research in recent years. This allows synthesising research with a regional and diachronic approach. more than enough? Indeed, most of the papers in this volume offer studies on subsistence and surplus production with a wide geographical perspective. The research areas The environmental archaeology of subsistence, vary considerably, ranging from the American Mid-South to Turkey. The range specialisation and surplus food production in time periods is just as wide, from c. 7000 BC to the 16th century AD. Topics covered include foraging strategies, the combination of domestic and wild edited by food resources in the Neolithic, water supply, crop specialisation, the effect Maaike Groot, Daphne Lentjes and Jørn Zeiler of the Roman occupation on animal husbandry, town-country relationships and the monastic economy. With this collection of papers and the theoretical framework presented in the introductory chapter, we wish to demonstrate that the topic of subsistence and surplus production remains of interest, and promises to generate more exciting research in the future. Sidestone Sidestone Press ISBN: 978-90-8890-199-7 9 789088 901997 This is a digital offprint from: Groot, M., D. Lentjes & J. Zeiler (eds) 2013: Barely Surviving or More than Enough? The environmental archaeology of subsistence, specialisation and surplus food production. Leiden: Sidestone Press. Sidestone Press * A new generation of Publishing This is a free offprint, read the entire book at the Sidestone e-library! You can find the full version of this book at the Sidestone e-library. Here most of our publications are fully accessible for free. For access to more free books visit: www.sidestone.com/library Download Full PDF Visit the Sidestone e-library to download most of our e-books for only € 4,50. For this minimal fee you will receive a fully functional PDF and by doing so, you help to keep our library running. www.sidestone.com/library © 2013 Individual authors Published by Sidestone Press, Leiden www.sidestone.com ISBN 978-90-8890-192-8 Photographs cover: bottom: © Meirion | Dreamstime.com top: © Andrey Pavlov | Dreamstime.com Lay-out & cover design: Sidestone Press Contents Studying subsistence and surplus production 7 Maaike Groot and Daphne Lentjes The role of gathering in Middle Archaic social complexity in the 29 Mid-South: a diachronic perspective Stephen B. Carmody and Kandace D. Hollenbach Rethinking Neolithic subsistence at the gateway to Europe with new 59 archaeozoological evidence from Istanbul Canan Çakırlar Agricultural production between the 6th and the 3rd millennium cal 81 BC in the central part of the Valencia region (Spain) Guillem Pérez Jordà and Leonor Peña-Chocarro From subsistence to market exchange: the development of an 101 agricultural economy in 1st-millennium-BC Southeast Italy Daphne Lentjes Three systems of agrarian exploitation in the Valencian region of 131 Spain (400-300 BC) Mª Pilar Iborra Eres and Guillem Pérez Jordà The well in the settlement: a water source for humans and livestock, 151 studied through insect remains from Southeast Sweden Magnus Hellqvist The Late Iron Age-Roman transformation from subsistence to 175 surplus production in animal husbandry in the Central and Western parts of the Netherlands Joyce van Dijk and Maaike Groot Tracing changes in animal husbandry in Mallorca (Balearic Islands, 201 Western Mediterranean) from the Iron Age to the Roman Period Alejandro Valenzuela, Josep Antoni Alcover, Miguel Ángel Cau Food production and exchanges in the Roman civitas Tungrorum 225 Fabienne Pigière and Annick Lepot Entrepreneurs and traditional farmers: the effects of an emerging 247 market in Middle Saxon England Matilda Holmes Scant evidence of great surplus: research at the rural Cistercian 279 monastery of Holme Cultram, Northwest England Don O’Meara The well in the settlement: a water source for humans and livestock, studied through insect remains from Southeast Sweden Magnus Hellqvist Uppsala University Department of Earth Sciences Villavägen 16 752 36 Uppsala Sweden [email protected] Abstract Water is the most important resource for human subsistence, essential for the survival and the base of many other parts of the processes in sustenance. One important part of settlements’ water resources is the well, in prehistory and still today. It also plays an important role in understanding the utilisation of the palaeohydrological situation of the landscape. In order to understand the water resource in the local well constructions in the settlement, the content of insect remains together with stratigraphy were studied, in order to investigate the history of construction and use and sediment composition of wells at three Iron Age sites in Southeast Sweden. The study concentrated on the Pre-Roman Iron Age to Roman Iron Age (2500–1600 cal BP), and the wells were situated in a rural landscape. There was a trend in the usage of the wells over time within the settlements. The results indicate a change of the well as a water source for humans to a waterhole for livestock after abandonment, and through that a change in land use within a small geographical range. A complicating situation, when reconstructing the water resource management, is that all three studied sites were situated close to or in direct connection to running water. This partly makes the role of the wells as a water source within the palaeohydrological situation in the landscape unclear, since we do not know which was most important for the water supply for subsistence for people and cattle. In the study area the distance to the Baltic Sea has changed in time through land uplift, resulting in a longer distance to the sea up to the present time and a total change in the landscape from open sea to archipelago and finally to land. hellqvist 151 Keywords: well, water supply, insect remains, waterhole, Sweden Introduction Arranging an adequate water supply is the most important resource management problem humans have been forced to find solutions for throughout history. It is the most important ingredient for human survival and the basic resources in daily life and likewise an important resource for livestock. What we find in the archaeological context are remnants of different solutions to guarantee the water supply to the settlement. The most obvious feature is the well, the man-made construction that supplies water locally within the settlement. On the one hand it is reasonable to expect that people ensured that there was always a surplus of available water resources over the year, so they would never have to face a situation of water shortage. Deficiency of fresh water must be considered as an extremely problematic situation, especially for the livestock. On the other hand, solutions for fresh water supply must be arranged locally so it is available in everyday life. Well construction has played an important role in providing a water supply for people since prehistoric and historic times. The study of wells in settlements in the prehistoric landscape requires the consideration of the hydrological situation in its entirety, and the relation between people and different water resources. We do not always have a clear understanding of the use of the well, and in the study presented here, there was a unclear relation between the well and other natural water sources in the landscape surrounding the settlement. One aspect of the situation is the fact that all investigated settlements were situated close to natural water sources, such as smaller rivers. One question is whether wells functioned as a complementary water source or whether they formed the main water supply, or if these resources worked as complementary water supplies over the year to provide fresh water. During investigations of insect remains from wells at two Iron Age farm settlements in South Central Sweden (Hellqvist 1999), a relationship between the settlement and a nearby river was established through insects living in the river environment. The fact that they were trapped and deposited in the well indicates that they were moving between the two aquatic situations. The results from the well show how difficult the relation between natural water sources in the landscape and wells within a settlement may be, and that it is not easy to reconstruct the daily water resource management; however, the role of water for survival of people and animals is unquestionable. Wells and similar features are common findings during archaeological excavations in Sweden, but unfortunately, until the mid-1990s, many archaeologists in Sweden considered wells as features of less interesting parts of the excavation. This affected the opportunities for studying subfossil insect remains, with limited studies of wells in Sweden (e.g. Lemdahl 1994; 2003; Hellqvist 1999; 2004; 2007b; Hellqvist and Lemdahl 1996), although there are a lot of studies of insect remains from wells and pits from other parts of Europe (e.g. Buckland 1980; Coope and Osborne 1968; Hall et al. 1980; Kenward et al.

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