Archaeobotanical studies of past plant cultivation in northern Europe

Santeri Vanhanen, Per Lagerås, Santeri Vanhanen, Per Lagerås

• Publisher: Barkhuis
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9789493194113
• eBook ISBN:
  9789493194168
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Botany
• Index: Social Sciences

Plant cultivation has a long and successful history that is tightly linked to environmental and climate change, social development and to cultural traditions and diversity. This is true also for the high latitudes of northern Europe, where cultivation started thousands of years before the earliest written records. The long history of cultivation can be studied by archaeobotany, which is the study of ancient seeds, pollen and other plant remains found on archaeological sites. This book presents recent advances in North-European archaeobotany. It focuses on plant cultivation and brings together studies from different countries and research environments, both at universities and within contract archaeology. The studies cover the Nordic countries and adjacent parts of the Baltic countries and Russia, and they span more than 5, 000 years of agricultural history, from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages. They highlight and discuss many different aspects of early agriculture, from the first introduction of cultivation, to crop choices, expansions and declines, climatic adaptation, and vegetable gardening.

Table of contents

• Table of contents
• Introduction to Archaeobotanical studies of past plant cultivation in northern Europe
• Barley cultivation in Viking Age Iceland in light of evidence from Lækjargata 10–12, Reykjavík
• Cereal cultivation in south-western Norway: Boom and bust in the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age
• Free-threshing wheat in Danish prehistory
• A Bronze Age house at Hestehaven: An early example of storage and cultivation of hulled barley (Hordeum vulgare var. vulgare) in Denmark
• Tracing pioneer agriculture in northern Norway
• Indications of rye (Secale cereale) cultivation from 7th century south-western Norway
• The development of plant use and cultivation in the Sukhona basin, north-west Russian taiga zone
• Gardening at medieval farmsteads: Archaeobotanical indications of horticulture in Denmark and southern Sweden, AD 1000–1500
• Roman Iron Age and Migration period plant cultivation at Salo Isokylä, south-western Finland
• New cereal grain finds from southern Satakunta, Finland, dated from the Late Bronze Age to the Middle Ages
• From barley to buckwheat: Plants cultivated in the Eastern Baltic region until the 13th–14th century AD
• Iron Age emmer and spelt: Where, when and why? A review of archaeobotanical evidence from southern Sweden, c. AD 1–600