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Harvesting the ‘wild’? Exploring the context of fruit and nut exploitation at Neolithic Dikili Tash, with special reference to wine

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Abstract

The relationship between farming communities in south-eastern Europe and wild plant resources, fruit and nut trees in particular, is explored in this paper, based on charred plant remains from House 1 at late Neolithic Dikili Tash in eastern Macedonia, northern Greece, retrieved between 2010 and 2012. Within the rubble of a burnt destruction level dated to the second half of the 5th millennium cal BC, a wide range of cultivated crops like cereals, pulses and flax were stored together with a variety of fruit and nuts, such as acorns, wild pears, grapes, including grape pips and grape pressings and possibly figs, too. These finds provide a rare opportunity to investigate the use of fruit as well as the origins and context of wine making and consumption in the Neolithic of south-eastern Europe. Human interference with natural vegetation in relation to use of wild trees is discussed in light of the archaeobotanical, palynological and charcoal evidence from the wider area of the site. It is suggested that the remains from Dikili Tash may be pointing towards some early form of arboriculture in the region. The interplay of wild and domesticated plant resources encountered at the site is discussed within the framework of established oppositions between ‘wild’ and ‘domesticated’ in archaeological discourse. It is suggested that fruit and nut use at Dikili Tash might correspond to old traditions dating back to the hunter-gatherers of south-eastern Europe while wine, for which there is evidence at the site, might have acted as a mediator between human communities, cultivated landscapes and wild vegetation, inducing altered states of consciousness and cultivated/wild boundary transitions.

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Acknowledgments

The Dikili Tash excavation program is run under the auspices of the École française d’Athènes (EFA) and the Athens Archaeological Society. I am deeply grateful to the directors of the excavation, Pascal Darcque, Chaido Koukouli-Chrysanthaki, Dimitra Malamidou and Zoï Tsirtsoni for entrusting me with the study of the Dikili Tash material and for generously providing every possible help, in the field and during study and preparation of this paper. Nicolas Garnier kindly provided unpublished information on his residue analysis of the Dikili Tash pottery fragments. Stephanie Thiébault kindly provided unpublished information on the presence of Vitis wood at Dikili Tash. Laurent Lespez generously shared unpublished information on current palynological investigations in the vicinity of Dikili Tash. Special thanks go to a large number of students of the Department of Archaeology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki who provided their help in the field and in the laboratory between 2010 and 2012, in particular our postgraduate students Angeliki Karathanou, Martha Kokkidou, Chryssa Petridou, Eleni Telioridou and Aimilia Kokonaki. Chryssa Petridou provided invaluable help in the study of the plant remains presented here. Natalia Alonso, Ferran Antolín-Tutusaus, René Cappers, Lucy Kubiak Martens and Hans-Peter Stika provided help towards Pyrus amygdaliformis identification. Tassos Bekiaris and Nikos Katsikaridis helped with Fig. 8a, b. Hüseyin Çınar Öztürk and Burcin Erdoğu facilitated comprehension of the Turkish literature. I am also grateful to Stephanie Jacomet and an anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. I wish to gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the archaeobotanical work at Dikili Tash, largely provided by the National Geographic Society with further financial help from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Institute for Aegean Prehistory (INSTAP) and the École française d’Athènes.

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  1. Department of Archaeology, School of History and Archaeology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124, Thessaloníki, Greece

    Soultana Maria Valamoti

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Communicated by: F. Bittmann.

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Valamoti, S.M. Harvesting the ‘wild’? Exploring the context of fruit and nut exploitation at Neolithic Dikili Tash, with special reference to wine. Veget Hist Archaeobot 24, 35–46 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-014-0487-6

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