Pathways to plant domestication in Southeast Anatolia based on new data from aceramic Neolithic Gusir Höyük.

Southeast Anatolia is home to some of the earliest and most spectacular Neolithic sites associated with the beginning of cultivation and herding in the Old World. In this article we present new archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological data from Gusir Höyük, an aceramic Neolithic habitation dating to the 12th-late 11th millennia cal BP. Our results show selective use of legume crop progenitors and nuts during the earlier part of this period, followed by the management of cereal and legume crop progenitors from the mid-11th millennium cal BP. This contrasts with data available from other Anatolian habitations indicating broad spectrum plant use with low crop progenitor inputs. Early aceramic Neolithic Anatolian plant and animal exploitation strategies were site-specific, reflecting distinctive identities and culinary choices rather than environmental constraints. A multivariate evaluation of wheat grain metrics alongside botanical and radiometric data indicate that early wheat domestication in southeast Anatolia occurred at a faster pace than predicted by current hypotheses for a protracted transition to farming in Southwest Asia. We argue that this phenomenon is best explained as a corollary of the increasing importance of cereals in feasting at southeast Anatolian sites characterised by increasing architectural complexity and elaboration during the 11th millennium cal BP.

The Zagros Epipalaeolithic revisited: New excavations and 14C dates from Palegawra cave in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Palegawra cave, alongside its neighbouring Zarzi, has been an emblematic site of the Epipalaeolithic (Zarzian) cultural horizon in the NW Zagros of Southwest Asia ever since its first exploration in 1951 by Bruce Howe and Robert Braidwood in the context of the Iraq-Jarmo project. At the time scientific excavation, sampling and analysis methods were either under-developed or did not exist. In this paper we present the first results of new excavations at Palegawra conducted in 2016-2017 by the Eastern Fertile Crescent (EFEC) project, a research collaboration of the University of Liverpool and the Sulaymaniyah Directorate of Antiquities and Heritage. Our research has produced the first radiometric evidence pushing back the chronology of the NW Zagros Epipalaeolithic to the Last Glacial Maximum, thus fully aligning it with Epipalaeolithic facies until now known only from the Levant and the south Anatolian coast. We have also unearthed, for the first time in the Palaeolithic of the Zagros, direct archaeobotanical evidence for hitherto elusive Zarzian plant exploitation and the vegetation of the NW Zagros piedmont zone from the LGM to the end of the Lateglacial (~19,600-13,000 cal BP). The new Palegawra chronology alongside our detailed studies of its material culture and faunal and botanical assemblages suggest that the prevailing Epipalaeolithic habitation pattern in the NW Zagros (centred on generalised persistent occupations of small caves and rock-shelters alongside task-oriented ephemeral open-air campsites) remained an enduring characteristic of the Zarzian horizon throughout this period. The Palegawra data clearly show that neither resource levels and climate conditions nor geographic and/or cultural isolation provide adequate explanations for the stability and longevity of Zarzian lifeways during this long timespan. More fieldwork is required, including the discovery, excavation and intensive sampling of other Zarzian sites, for reaching a data-informed understanding of the nature and evolution of the NW Zagros Epipalaeolithic.

Issues of theory and method in the analysis of Paleolithic mortuary behavior: A view from Shanidar Cave.

Mortuary behavior (activities concerning dead conspecifics) is one of many traits that were previously widely considered to have been uniquely human, but on which perspectives have changed markedly in recent years. Theoretical approaches to hominin mortuary activity and its evolution have undergone major revision, and advances in diverse archeological and paleoanthropological methods have brought new ways of identifying behaviors such as intentional burial. Despite these advances, debates concerning the nature of hominin mortuary activity, particularly among the Neanderthals, rely heavily on the rereading of old excavations as new finds are relatively rare, limiting the extent to which such debates can benefit from advances in the field. The recent discovery of in situ articulated Neanderthal remains at Shanidar Cave offers a rare opportunity to take full advantage of these methodological and theoretical developments to understand Neanderthal mortuary activity, making a review of these advances relevant and timely.

The impact of environmental change on Palaeolithic and Mesolithic plant use and the transition to agriculture at Franchthi Cave, Greece.

The multi-period (~38,000-6000 cal BP) site of Franchthi Cave, located in the Argolid peninsula of southern mainland Greece, is unique in the Eastern Mediterranean for preserving a long archaeological sequence extending from the Upper Palaeolithic through to the end of the Neolithic period. In this paper, we present new anthracological (carbonized fuel wood waste) evidence from Franchthi Cave with which we reconstruct the changing ecology of woodland vegetation in its environs during the late Pleistocene and the early-mid Holocene. The integrated archaeobotanical record (charred wood and non-wood macro-remains) demonstrates that in the Lateglacial the now-submerged coastal shelf of the southern Argolid peninsula was covered by steppe grassland vegetation dominated by junipers, almonds, cereals and legumes. The rapid climatic amelioration that marked the start of the Holocene brought about the disappearance of juniper and the expansion of deciduous woodland, cereals and lentils. This woodland-grassland biome bears no analogues in the modern and historical vegetation ecology of the Aegean basin. Instead, it is directly comparable to the steppe woodland biomes exploited by late Pleistocene and early Holocene hunter-gatherers in Southwest Asia, and points to the convergent evolution of late Pleistocene and early Holocene plant exploitation strategies between the two regions. Continuous sea-level rise during the early Holocene led to the gradual extinction of this unique palaeohabitat, which acted as the catalyst for the selective introduction of domesticated cereal crops at Franchthi Cave in the early 9th millennium cal BP. Our meta-analysis of the non-wood archaeobotanical data puts into question the concept of the wholesale introduction of a crop "package" by pioneer settler groups arriving from the East. It is proposed instead that selective cereal crop introduction formed part of a complex pattern of sociocultural interactions that brought together indigenous and immigrant groups into new communities.

Agricultural origins on the Anatolian plateau.

This paper explores the explanations for, and consequences of, the early appearance of food production outside the Fertile Crescent of Southwest Asia, where it originated in the 10th/9th millennia cal BC. We present evidence that cultivation appeared in Central Anatolia through adoption by indigenous foragers in the mid ninth millennium cal BC, but also demonstrate that uptake was not uniform, and that some communities chose to actively disregard cultivation. Adoption of cultivation was accompanied by experimentation with sheep/goat herding in a system of low-level food production that was integrated into foraging practices rather than used to replace them. Furthermore, rather than being a short-lived transitional state, low-level food production formed part of a subsistence strategy that lasted for several centuries, although its adoption had significant long-term social consequences for the adopting community at Boncuklu. Material continuities suggest that Boncuklu's community was ancestral to that seen at the much larger settlement of Çatalhöyük East from 7100 cal BC, by which time a modest involvement with food production had been transformed into a major commitment to mixed farming, allowing the sustenance of a very large sedentary community. This evidence from Central Anatolia illustrates that polarized positions explaining the early spread of farming, opposing indigenous adoption to farmer colonization, are unsuited to understanding local sequences of subsistence and related social change. We go beyond identifying the mechanisms for the spread of farming by investigating the shorter- and longer-term implications of rejecting or adopting farming practices.