Scholars are increasingly favoring models for the origins of agriculture that involve a protracted process of increasing interdependence within a series of mutualistic relationships between humans and plants, as opposed to a rapid single event or innovation. Nonetheless, these scholars continue to debate over when people first started foraging for grass seeds, when they began to readily utilize sickles, how prominent the early selection pressures were, and when the first traits of domestication fully introgressed into the cultivated grass population. Here, we present complementary archaeobotanical and archaeological (stone tool) evidence for cereal foragers from Toda-1 Cave in the Surkhan Darya, dating to 9200 cal BP. We conclude that early Holocene foragers were processing grains along with nuts and fruits as far north as the rich river valleys of southern Uzbekistan. These data expand the known range that preagricultural cereal foragers covered in the early Holocene, adding to our understanding of the cultural processes that led to farming. Additionally, we present the earliest evidence for people interacting with the progenitors for pistachios and apples (or a close apple relative). The complex foraging behaviors that led to cultivation were being undertaken by people during the early Holocene across a wider area of Eurasia than previously thought.

It has become increasingly apparent that the origins of agriculture in Southwest Asia were an emergent and extended process that resulted from local evolutionary processes and social networks of interaction and exchange that extended across the region. Although the end of the process of domestication and economic transformation shows general regional similarities, sub-regional trajectories differ when evidence of economy and domestication processes are examined independently. This research evaluates the presumed linear trajectory, from hunting and gathering to pre-domestication cultivation to domestication with agriculture and explores the mosaic of subsistence practices leading to agricultural reliance. This paper compiles quantitative data on the proportion of crops in archaeobotanical sites over time and across the Near East. Foraging-focused, mixed subsistence and agricultural economies are compared alongside non-shattering data from cereals with the results suggestive of sites with higher levels of food production (agriculture) without domesticated crops, low-levels of food production with domesticated crops, and variability of economic systems when crops were under pre-domestication cultivation. Results show a dominance of mixed-subsistence economic systems and the persistence of “middle ground societies” for nearly 4,000 years, contradicting ethnographic inferences that intermediate or mixed-subsistence economies are unstable. The potential correlation between reliance on cultivation and domestication, as quantified from morphological evidence for non-shattering or grain size change, indicates that there is not a single directional trend in economy and domestication. There also appears to be some evidence for intensification of the reliance on cultivation as domesticated sheep/goat become widespread. These data highlight the need to consider economic trajectories on different sites and regions independently from the evidence for morphological change.

Two commensal pathways to plant domestication-ruderal and segetal-have been proposed. These domestication pathways are detailed here, together with associated archaeobotanical morphometric data for multiple crops within each pathway. The ruderal pathway characterizes how plants adapted to anthropically disturbed habitats, which can be associated with foraging or farming communities, were domesticated by people. Ruderal crops discussed are squash (Cucurbita pepo), aji chili (Capsicum baccatum) and melon (Cucumis melo). The segetal pathway characterizes how weeds in agricultural contexts became crops. Segetal crops discussed are rye (Secale cereale) and kodo millet (Paspalum scrobiculatum). Metric archaeobotanical datasets are used to infer the domestication episode for crops and to calculate rates of change in domestication traits (Haldanes). Although metric archaeobotanical data limits presentation and discussion to seeds, it enables quantitative comparisons of domestication episodes and haldane rates with those of the grain and fruit tree domestication pathways, respectively. We conclude that early ruderals underwent slower domestication processes, whereas segetals and perhaps some later ruderals, underwent faster processes of domestication that probably involved conscious selection.This article is part of the theme issue 'Unravelling domestication: multi-disciplinary perspectives on human and non-human relationships in the past, present and future'.

Rice (Oryza sativa) was first domesticated beginning ~9,000 y ago in China as the japonica variety group/subspecies. Using genomic data from 456 japonica landraces, including data for 47 herbarium specimens collected over the last 167 y, we reconstruct how japonica rice moved from its center of origin to other parts of Asia beginning ~4,000 to 5,500 y ago. We observe an enrichment of pathogen resistance loci in selective sweeps associated with distinct geographic populations, suggesting that biotic interactions may be a key driver of local adaptation. We also find that the majority of 76 known functional mutations present in our japonica landraces-many of them associated with japonica rice domestication and diversification and important for modern breeding-had their origins in the Pleistocene >11,700 y ago and increased in allele frequency during key events in the evolution of rice.

The world's earliest documented transition from village to urban life took place in Mesopotamia during the fourth millennium BCE. In order to recognize the steps leading to this process, archaeologists have long focused on the development of village life in the preceding 'Ubaid period, corresponding broadly to the 5th millennium BCE. Our research aims to contribute to this ongoing process by presenting new evidence pertaining to changes in agricultural methods and the organization of food surplus from a site of the Late 'Ubaid period called Gurga Chiya, located in the Sharizor Plain of Iraqi Kurdistan. Excavation of the mid to late 5th millennium BCE sequence at Gurga Chiya led to the discovery of an architectural complex with partially preserved pise walls, most likely corresponding to a "tripartite" form of domestic building that appears widely characteristic of contemporaneous sites elsewhere in the Southwest Asia, from southeastern Turkey to central Iraq. One of the preserved rooms appears to have been used as a storage area for plant-based foods, as indicated by dense deposits of archaeobotanical remains, especially lentils and cereals. In this paper, we combine archaeological, architectural and archaeobotanical analysis to investigate the relationship between food storage and domestic economy at Gurga Chiya. These methods are supplemented by stable isotope analysis of Delta 13C and delta 15N values from preserved grains at Gurga Chiya and from the adjacent, Late Neolithic site Tepe Marani, and provides a diachronic perspective on changes in the methods used for cultivating crops. The limited data acquired from Tepe Marani and Gurga Chiya seem consistent with a gradual shift towards lower inputs per unit area-thus more extensive cultivation regimes-over time.

Despite being almost 4000m above sea level, cereal crops have been grown in the Ngari Prefecture on the Tibetan Plateau for thousands of years. Where and when domestic crop species adapted to high-altitude growing conditions is a matter of ongoing debate. Here, the authors present a new radiocarbon date from the Gepa serul cemetery, providing the earliest evidence of naked six-rowed barley in Tibet ( c . 3500 BP). Evaluating the available evidence for barley cultivation and interregional connections in central Asia at this time, two hypotheses are considered—a generational advance with farmers migrating up river valleys or rapid, long-distance trade through mountain corridors.

The domestication of grain crops is among the most important phenomena to facilitate humanity’s cultural development, and seed size increases are taken as one of the earliest domestication traits. Much remains unknown about the ecological drivers and cultural mechanisms surrounding this trait, but morphometric analyses have been crucial to investigate the topic for decades. Measurements on ancient cereal grains show that they evolved to produce larger seeds in their region of origin prior to dispersing beyond their progenitor range. This paper takes a transcontinental (Europe and Asia), long-term approach to comparative morphometric data. Unpublished measurements from over 10 sites of barley, free-threshing wheat, broomcorn millet, and foxtail millet from Central Asia and China have been collected for this study. We have contrasted these with published data from Europe, southwest and Central, East and South Asia. We investigate whether these cereals evolved in parallel or divergent ways across different lineages after they dispersed from their centres of origin; we trace seed size changes from initial cultivation through their spread and eventual adaptation to novel environments. This comparative analysis allows us to discuss rates of evolution and highlight evolutionary trends within some of the most important cereal crops across the Eurasian continent. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Unravelling domestication: multi-disciplinary perspectives on human and non-human relationships in the past, present and future’.

The unrivaled millennia-long historical chronology of ancient Egypt forms the backbone for archaeological synchronization across the entire Eastern Mediterranean region c. 3000-1000 BCE. However, for more than a century, scholars have wrangled over the correct calendrical positioning of this record, with older scenarios being referred to as 'High', and younger ones, 'Low' chronologies. Offsets between the two can be as great as a century, substantially confusing connections with other civilizations of the time. Here, we settle this debate for two major periods of political unity in ancient Egypt, the Old Kingdom (the Pyramid Age), and the Middle Kingdom. We introduce 48 high-precision radiocarbon dates obtained through rare access to museum collections as well as freshly excavated samples. By combining these new results with legacy radiocarbon data and with text records for reign lengths of kings within a Bayesian statistical framework, we show that the Low Chronology is no longer empirically supported for the Old and Middle Kingdoms, and resolve a long-standing historical schism.

We reconsider the environmental backgrounds of early millet cultures in northern China that predate the Yangshao period (before ca. 7000 BP). Interactions among soils, millets, pigs, and changing regional climate conditioned multiple early cultivation traditions. Holocene climate influenced vegetation change, including the availability of wild millets versus other storable plants like tree nuts. Early millet cultivators were located in ecotone regions between sparser woodlands and steppe, incorporating local microenvironments that would have suited wild millets and acquisition of wild boar that became domesticated as they were moved into newly sedentary settlements. Diverse local hydrological and soil conditions shaped different regional trajectories and multiple pathways to millet domestication. The search for agricultural origins in China needs to adopt a multicentric geography and a paradigm of "protraction and entanglement" rather than pursue a single origin. The pre-Yangshao cultures reviewed here appear to be in stages of increasing landscape management, the predomestication cultivation of millets, and with varied commitments to pig management. However, this does not entail that each cultural trajectory followed through to eventual millet domestication and full agricultural economies, and we expect various intermediate economies, some of which may have been dead ends in agricultural origins.

The transition to sedentary agricultural societies in northern China fuelled considerable demographic growth from 5000 to 2000 BC. In this article, we draw together archaeobotanical, zooarchaeological and bioarchaeological data and explore the relationship between several aspects of this transition, with an emphasis on the millet-farming productivity during the Yangshao period and how it facilitated changes in animal husbandry and consolidation of sedentism. We place the period of domestication (the evolution of non-shattering, initial grain size increase and panicle development) between 8300 and 4300 BC. The domestication and post-domestication of foxtail (Setaria italica) and broomcorn (Panicum miliaceum) millet increased their productivity substantially, with much greater rate of change than for rice (Oryza sativa). However, millets are significantly less productive per hectare than wet rice farming, a point reflected in the greater geographical expanse of northern Neolithic millet cultures (5000-3000 BC) in comparison with their Yangtze rice-growing counterparts. The domestication of pigs in the Yellow River region is evidenced by changes in their morphology after 6000 BC, and a transition to a millet-based diet c. 4500-3500 BC. Genetic data and isotopic data from dogs indicate a similar dietary transition from 6000 to 4000 BC, leading to new starch-consuming dog breeds. Significant population increase associated with agricultural transitions arose predominately from the improvement of these crops and animals following domestication, leading to the formation of the first proto-urban centres and the demic-diffusion of millet agriculture beyond central northern China between 4300-2000 BC.

Myanmar is located within an important geographic corridor of prehistoric demographic and technological exchange, yet relatively few archaeological sites have been securely dated. Here, the authors present a new radiocarbon chronology for Halin, a UNESCO-listed complex in the north-central Sagaing Division of Myanmar, which contributes to the generation of nuanced regional chronologies and to improving the temporal resolution of Southeast Asia more generally. Discussion of 94 radiocarbon determinates, together with site stratigraphy and pottery traditions, provides a chronological sequence from the early third millennium BC to the early second millennium AD. Corroboration of the beginning of this sequence would place Halin as the oldest currently dated Neolithic site in Mainland Southeast Asia and would provide support for the two-layer model of Neolithic migration.

Food is a biological necessity, but it is culturally constructed with different techniques and cooking and preparation practices characterizing different regional and chronological cultures. Cooking and the creation of cuisines is implicated in the evolution of humans and is a key part of what makes our species distinct from other species. Once established, regional cooking traditions can be long lasting and contribute to defining different cultural traditions. For instance, Eurasia can be divided into a number of regional traditions, including a major contrast between a bread baking zone in western Asia and later Europe and an eastern Asian zone of boiling and steaming, where ceramics long preceded agriculture. While archaeology has long studied subsistence in terms of those species that constituted diet, foodstuffs or cuisines in terms of how they are prepared and cooked have become accessible to archaeology more recently through various methodological advances. This includes the potential to identify small fragments of bread or porridge in archaeobotanical flotation samples, allowing for example the identification of bread before the domestication of wheat. The extension of this approach to more culinary preparations and regions represents a major direction for further research.

This article provides an up-to-date review of the origins and spread of cottons in the Old World based on archaeobotanical evidence, and explores the routes and socioeconomic context through which cotton cultivation became established across the tropics and sub-tropics of Asia and Africa. Two cotton species were domesticated in the Old World, one of which was grown for millennia as a long-lived tree ( Gossypium arboreum ) and the other as a shrub over several years ( Gossypium herbaceum ). While G. arboreum began to be cultivated during the Middle Holocene (7000 -4000 years ago) in Pakistan and Northwest India, G. herbaceum was likely domesticated in Africa, perhaps in Sudan. Evidence for cultivation of cotton in Sudan dates from around 2000 years ago, the same period that import of cotton from India into the Roman world was common. The spread of cotton through the African continent involved three trajectories. In southeast Africa, its near coastal islands and Madgascar, received cotton, inferred to be G. arboreum from India, around 1000 years ago in the context of increasing contact across the Indian ocean. As for western Africa, we postulate two dispersal routes: an oasis route through the Sahara and Sahel that focused on G. herbaceum, and a savanna route further south that brought G. arboreum to Cameroon, Benin and Ghana.

Archaeobotanical material from excavations at Tel Bet Yerah (Khirbet el-Kerak) provides insight into Early Bronze Age urbanisation in the Southern Levant and differences in food choices between Levantine and diasporic Early Transcaucasian communities. In the pre-urban period of the Early Bronze 1B (3350-3100 BC), comparative analysis of cereals and crop processing by-products indicates that food production was managed by individual households in a village type economy. The site dramatically changed in the Early Bronze II urbanisation period (3100-2850 BC). Household food production appeared stable throughout, however, there is evidence for beginnings of centralised storage of agricultural resources in the urban period at Tel Bet Yerah. During the Early Bronze III (2850-2500 BC), the site's urban organisation collapsed and migrant settlers bearing Khirbet Kerak Ware occupied abandoned sections of the site alongside local inhabitants. Comparison of crops and weed flora identifies that the two groups potentially cultivated and processed some of their crops separately and that the crop choices of the Khirbet Kerak Ware community maintained connections to northern Early Transcaucasian Culture culinary traditions.

Enset ( Ensete ventricosum, Musaceae) is an important economic crop from Ethiopia which accounts for 20% of the staple diet in Ethiopia today. However, its evolutionary history and spread is poorly understood. Archaeology could provide evidence of past use and contribute to our understanding of its early history, but so far, this has not transpired. Cultivated enset is clonally reproduced and seed production rarely occurs, therefore, looking for seed remains is futile and instead archaeobotanical research should focus on microfossils such as phytoliths. Phytoliths have been shown to be diagnostic for the presence of banana ( Musa ) and are expected to be similarly useful for identifying enset, but we need a better understanding of phytolith production and variability, and the extent to which this may be used to track domestication. The current study provides a fundamental baseline for the identification of Ensete phytoliths through the examination of phytoliths from leaves and other plant parts based on their size and shape. We consider the differentiation of phytoliths across a single plant, based on location in the leaf, the age of the leaf, and different organs of the plant. We also compare phytoliths in the Musaceae Family, and between the enset cultivar and wild samples. HIGHLIGHTS We provide the first identification baseline to differentiate wild from domesticated enset by looking at variation across an individual enset plant and comparing these results to phytoliths from wild plants. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

South India and the island of Sri Lanka together constitute a geographically and culturally complex region with shared aspects of geology, ecology and ancient cultural phases. The region is characterized by a long history of interactions between local traditions and the wider South-(East) Asian, Near Eastern and East African regions; equally important in shaping its cultural traditions are the continuous local adaptations to changing environments. Starting from the Lower and Middle Paleolithic, this concise overview summarizes the most recent archaeological reconstructions of the (cultural) landscape of the Deccan throughout the Paleolithic, Neolithic, Iron Age, and Early Historic periods. The geographic setting—notably important in shaping past cultural traditions—is outlined, alongside a linguistic reconstruction of the Dravidian Language Family, which is a product of past human migrations in the region, before addressing major transitions in lithic technology, the Neolithic and food production, the construction of megalithic tombs in the Iron Age, and the Early Historic period as the region became increasingly entangled with northern India, both culturally and politically.

The Neolithic was an era of transformations away from hunter-gatherer economies and toward economies relying increasingly on sedentary agriculture. This new economy was based on domesticated plants and animals, sedentary habitation, and the production of new technologies, especially ceramics. The onset of the Neolithic took place at different times across different regional traditions and by extension the components that characterize the Neolithic transition did not arise simultaneously. The Neolithic transitions have generally been dated to between 6000 BCE and 2000 BCE in South Asia. This entry traces the advent of livestock, crop agriculture and the appearance of ceramics across the South Asia region, focusing on eight regional zones. In many regions the start of the Neolithic was contemporary with the urban Harappan civilization of the Indus Valley. Sedentism was widespread by 2000 BCE, supported by agriculture which was established on most of the Indian subcontinent before 1000 BCE. Some regions appear to have domesticated crops from locally available wild species, including in northwestern India, the Saurashtra Peninsula, South India, and the Ganges basin. Alongside this development was the dispersal of crops of West Asian origin (barley, wheats) and livestock (sheep and goat) into South Asia that would play a central part in the development of agriculture in many regions. The origins of Indian rice are complex and not yet conclusive; current hypotheses on its origin are summarized, including evidence for long periods of wild rice management and hybridization with domesticated rice introduced from East Asia only after 4000 years ago.