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Harvesting practices and early Neolithic barley cultivation at el-Hemmeh, Jordan

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Abstract

Recent research strongly suggests polyphetic origins of multiple cultigens across Southwest Asia approximately 11,000 years ago during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A period. The harvesting practices that contributed to the dedicated use of cultivation as a plant exploitation strategy remain largely unidentified. Archaeobotanical data from el-Hemmeh, a settlement site dating to ca. 10850 cal. b.p., provides an opportunity to examine in close detail the harvesting strategies that may have contributed to the development of domesticated forms. Initial analyses indicate a variety of wild plant foods including barley, lentils, vetch, Pistacia cf. atlantica and fig were exploited, while the presence of large predomesticated barley grains and potential weed species suggest cereal cultivation was also pursued at the site. Barley rachis internodes from el-Hemmeh typically possess a wild morphology, but 22% of specimens show evidence of a forced or “ripped” disarticulation. This suggests barley may have been harvested while ears were partially immature and required subsequent processing in order to disarticulate spikelets.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the conference organizers of the 2010 International Work Group for Palaeoethnobotany, including George Willcox of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique of France and Felix Bittmann of the Lower Saxony Institute for Historical Coastal Research in Germany, for the opportunity to participate and present our research. We greatly appreciate the assistance of Ksenija Borojevic, Boston University Department of Archaeology, for her technical expertise, guidance, and for the use of the Paleoethnobotany Laboratory reference collections. Thank you also to Aren Maier of Bar Ilan University for permission to collect wild barley from the nature preserve associated with the Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project. We would also like to thank the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, the Council for British Research in the Levant in Amman and the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman. Philip Graham and other crew members of the el-Hemmeh project provided much appreciated assistance in the field. Research was partially funded through the Cora du Bois Foundation, the Boston University Graduate Research Abroad Fellowship, the Edwin and Ruth S. White Prize, the American Schools of Oriental Research Platt Fellowship and the American School for Prehistoric Research.

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  1. Department of Archaeology, Boston University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    Chantel E. White

  2. Institute for Pre- and Protohistory, Christian-Albrechts-Universität, 24098, Kiel, Germany

    Cheryl A. Makarewicz

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  1. Chantel E. White
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Correspondence to Chantel E. White.

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Communicated by G. Willcox.

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White, C.E., Makarewicz, C.A. Harvesting practices and early Neolithic barley cultivation at el-Hemmeh, Jordan. Veget Hist Archaeobot 21, 85–94 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-011-0309-z

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