Wild Harvest: Plants in the Hominin and Pre-Agrarian Human Worlds (Studying Scientific Archaeology)

Plants are fundamental to life; they are used by all human groups and most animals. They provide raw materials, vitamins and essential nutrients and we could not survive without them. Yet access to plant use before the Neolithic can be challenging. In some places, plant remains rarely survive and reconstructing plant use in pre-agrarian contexts needs to be conducted using a range of different techniques. This lack of visible evidence has led to plants being undervalued, both in terms of their contribution to diet and as raw materials. This book outlines why the role of plants is required for a better understanding of hominin and pre-agrarian human life, and it offers a variety of ways in which this can be achieved. Wild Harvest is divided into three sections. In section 1 each chapter focuses on a specific feature of plant use by humans; this covers the role of carbohydrates, the need for and effects of processing methods, the role of plants in self-medication among apes, plants as raw materials, and the extent of evidence for plant use prior to the development of agriculture in the Near East. Section 2 comprises seven chapters which cover different methods available to obtain information on plants, and the third section has five chapters, each covering a topic related to ethnography, ethnohistory, or ethnoarchaeology, and how these can be used to improve our understanding of the role of plants in the pre-agrarian past. IntroductionPart 1. Setting the scene1. Food carbohydrates from plants, by Les Copeland2. Why protein is not enough: the role of plants and plant processing in meeting human needs for dietary diversity, by Peter J. Butterworth, Peter R. Ellis and Michele Wollstonecroft3. An ape's perspective on the origin of medicinal plant use in humans, by Michael Huffman4. Plants as raw materials, by Karen Hardy5. Hunter-gatherer plant use in south west Asia: the path to agriculture. Amaia Arranz Juan Jose Ibanez and Lydia ZapataPart 2. Plant foods, tools and people. 6. Scanning Electron Microscopy and starchy food in Mesolithic Europe: the importance of roots and tubers in Mesolithic diet, by Lucy Kubiak-Martens7. Tools, use wear and experimentation: extracting plants from stone and bone, by Annelou van Gijn and Aimee Little8. Buccal dental microwear as an indicator of diet in modern and ancient human populations, by Laura Monica Martinez, Ferran Estebaranz and Alejandro Perez-Perez9. What early human populations ate. The use of phytoliths for identifying plant remains in the archaeological record at Olduvai, by Rosa Maria Albert and Irene Esteban10. Phytolith evidence of the use of plants as food by Late Natufians at Raqefet Cav, by Robert C Power, Arlene M Rosen and Dani Nadel11. Evidence of plant foods obtained from the dental calculus of individuals from a Brazilian shell mound, by Celia Helena C. Boyadjian Sabine Eggers and Rita Scheel-Ybert 12. Stable isotopes and mass spectrometry, by Karen Hardy and Stephen BuckleyPart 3. Providing a context: Ethnography, ethnohistory, ethnoarchaeology13. Prehistoric fish traps and fishing structures from Zamostje 2, Russian European Plain: Archaeological and ethnographic contexts, by Ignacio Clemente Conte, Vladimir M. Lozovski, Ermengol Gassiot Ballbe, Andrey N. Mazurkevich and Olga V. Lozovskaya14. Plants and archaeology in Australia, by Sally Brockwell, Janelle Stevenson and Annie Clarke15. Plentiful scarcity: plant use among Fuegian hunter-gatherers, by Marian Berihuete Azorin, Raquel PiqueHuerta and Maria-Estela Mansur 16. Ethnobotany in evolutionary perspective: wild plants in diet composition and daily use among Hadza hunter-gatherers, by Alyssa N. Crittenden17. Wild edible plant use among the people of Tomboronkoto, Kedougou region, Senegal, by Mathieu Gueye and Papa Ibra Samb The development of Neolithic house societies in Orkney: Investigations in the Bay of Firth, Mainland, Orkney (1994-2014), edited by Colin Richards and Richard Jones Major new textbook discussing the role of plants in hominin and pre-agrarian human societies with case studies drawn from ethnography, ethnohistory and ethnoarchaeology illustrating methods of analysis of plant remains and how archaeobotanical assemblages may be used and interpreted.