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Crop introductions and agricultural change in Anatolia during the long first millennium ce

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Abstract

Agricultural change in first and early second millennium ce Anatolia has been largely explored to date through palynological and historical datasets. This article presents a new synthesis of published archaeobotanical data that is used to explore regional differences in agricultural practices from the Roman (1st to mid-4th century ce) through the Ottoman (14th to 17th c. ce) periods and to document the timing of crop introductions. Arboriculture was important across Anatolia through the early Byzantine period (mid-4th to mid-9th c. ce) but nearly vanished by the Late Byzantine (13th to 15th c. ce), with an emphasis on annual cereal agriculture instead, a finding mirrored in prior palynological work. The Late Byzantine period saw a further divergence in cereal agriculture between areas under Byzantine and Turkish control, a new observation. Introduced crops include Prunus persica (peach), P. armeniaca (apricot), Morus spp. (mulberry), Oryza sativa (rice), and Gossypium arboreum/herbaceum (cotton).

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Acknowledgements

We thank Daniel Fuks, Frijda Schmidt, Neal Payne, and the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge for hosting the symposium for which this research was prepared. We thank the participants in that symposium for their feedback and comments, and also the many scholars whose published work forms the basis of the dataset we present here.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Archaeology Program, Boston University, 675 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    John M. Marston

  2. Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University, 15 E 84th St, New York, NY, 10028, USA

    Lorenzo Castellano

  3. Department of Anthropology, Boston University, 232 Bay State Road, Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    John M. Marston

  4. Department of Anthropology, New York University, 25 Waverly Place, New York, NY, 10003, USA

    Lorenzo Castellano

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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Data collection and analysis were performed by LC with contributions by JMM. The first draft of the manuscript was written by JMM and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to John M. Marston.

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Communicated by N. Payne.

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Marston, J.M., Castellano, L. Crop introductions and agricultural change in Anatolia during the long first millennium ce. Veget Hist Archaeobot (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-023-00919-z

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