Triticum timopheevii sensu lato (‘new glume wheat’, NGW) was first recognised as a distinct prehistoric cereal crop through work on archaeobotanical finds from Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in northern Greece. This was later followed by its identification in archaeobotanical assemblages from other parts of Europe. This paper provides an overview of the currently known archaeobotanical finds of Timopheev’s wheat in southeastern and eastern Europe and observes their temporal span and spatial distribution. To date, there are 89 prehistoric sites with these finds, located in different parts of the study region and dated from the Neolithic to the very late Iron Age. Their latest recorded presence in the region is in the last centuries bce . For assemblages from the site as a whole containing at least 30 grain and/or chaff remains of Timopheev’s wheat, we take a brief look at the overall relative proportions of Triticum monococcum (einkorn), T. dicoccum (emmer) and T. timopheevii s.l. (Timopheev’s wheat), the three most common glume wheats in our study region in prehistory. We highlight several sites where the overall proportions of Timopheev’s wheat might be taken to suggest it was a minor component of a mixed crop (maslin), or an unmonitored inclusion in einkorn or emmer fields. At the same sites, however, there are also discrete contexts where this wheat is strongly predominant, pointing to its cultivation as a pure crop. We therefore emphasise the need to evaluate the relative representation of Timopheev’s wheat at the level of individual samples or contexts before making inferences on its cultivation status. We also encourage re-examination of prehistoric and historic cereal assemblages for its remains.

This paper addresses for the first time a large body of archaeobotanical data from prehistoric Southeastern Europe, mostly published for the first time, that correspond to cereal food preparations. The evidence presented here comes from 20 sites situated in Greece and Bulgaria, spanning the Early Neolithic through to the Iron Age (7th millennium B.C.-1st millennium B.C.). The remains correspond to cereal fragments or agglomerations of fragments that resulted from ancient food preparation steps such as grinding, boiling, sprouting/malting, mixing in bread-like or porridge-like foodstuffs. The article builds on previous pilot studies and with the aid of stereomicroscopy and scanning electron microscopy offers a first classification and possible interpretations of the finds leading to the recipes that might have generated them. At the same time the article highlights the significance of retrieving and studying in depth such rare archaeobotanical finds, points out the interpretative problems stemming from such material and suggests ways forward to address similar archaeological finds in different parts of the world. The paper demonstrates the potential of the systematic study of cereal-based food remains, in our case prehistoric Southeastern Europe, to reveal a wide variability in cereal food transformation practices, suggestive of the interplay between available ingredients, cultural traditions and the complex interaction between society and environment.