Towards the archaeobotanical identification of intensive cereal cultivation: present-day ecological investigation in the mountains of Asturias, northwest Spain

Abstract.

The region of Asturias, northwest Spain, is highly unusual in that a cereal crop (spelt wheat) is cultivated on a garden scale using horticultural methods. A floristic survey was made of the weeds in 65 spelt plots in this region. The ecological attributes of the weed species were then measured and compared to an earlier study of the functional characteristics of weeds associated with pulse crops on the Greek island of Evvia. In this earlier study, it was possible to distinguish between plots cultivated intensively on a garden-scale and plots cultivated extensively in fields, on the basis of a suite of functional attributes of the weed species. The cereal plots from Asturias were correctly identified as gardens on the basis of the same suite of attributes. The Asturias plots were also compared to weed associations from autumn- and spring-sown crops in Germany, using a different suite of attributes, and were classified either as autumn-sown or ambiguously. This is consistent with the sowing time in Asturias, which is spread over late autumn to winter. These results demonstrate that the suites of functional attributes identified to distinguish intensive and extensive cultivation, and to recognise sowing time, can be applied in another geographical area and to another crop type. This paves the way for the application of these attributes to the identification of past agricultural practices from archaeological weed assemblages.