Hans-Peter Stika

• University of Hohenheim

This paper presents archaeobotanical findings from the El Argar and Late Bronze Age settlement of Fuente Álamo, southeast Spain. Analysis of 162 sediment samples revealed 22,669 plant remains. Barley (Hordeum vulgare) dominated cereal finds, while wheat was rare, indicating a significant shift from the preceding Copper Age. Linseed was a notable oi...

The potential impact of climatic deterioration on societal breakdowns in prehistory is often based on the mere coincidence of archaeological and palaeoclimatological proxies. For a more profound discussion, climate-sensitive archaeological parameters need to be identified. As agriculture and livestock are significantly affected by the recent climat...

During recent years many crop failures related to the ongoing climate crisis have been reported. From palaeoclimatic archives it is known that also in the past people had to cope with hazardous climatic anomalies such as the so-called 4.2 ka event. Similarly, pronounced changes in the crop spectrum have been documented from archaeobotanical studies...

The Balearic Islands were colonised around the transition from the Chalcolithic to the Bronze Age, not earlier than 2300 cal bce and certainly much later than any central or eastern Mediterranean islands. The number of archaeobotanical records is low and consists mainly of cereals and a few pulses. We present here new results of our long-term study...

Phoenicians were the first to systematically develop the area surrounding the Strait of Gibraltar at the end of the 9th century B.C. Following pioneering studies in the Río Guadiaro estuary (Málaga/Cádiz) in the 1980s, a German‐Spanish cooperation project focussed on the role of indigenous people in the Phoenician colonisation trading networks at L...

This paper provides archaeobotanical insights into plant utilization by Urnfield period settlers in present-day eastern Austria. The analysis of plant remains reveals a diverse agricultural economy and the comprehensive use of wild flora. Staple cereals included hulled barley, common millet, spelt, and emmer, with common millet and spelt gaining pr...

This paper assesses a series of experimentally generated cereal fragments with the aim to develop criteria for interpreting archaeological remains of ground cereals. Modern grain of einkorn and barley was subjected to processing by means of grinding, boiling and malting and then charred under controlled laboratory conditions. Neolithic replica grin...

Archäologie in Deutschland https://aid-magazin.de/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2021/01/Blick_ins_Heft_AiD_1-2021.pdf

OPEN-ACCESS, SEE https://rdcu.be/b6e3t FOR FULL LIST OF AUTHORS Broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum L.) is not one of the founder crops domesticated in Southwest Asia in the early Holocene, but was domesticated in northeast China by 6000 BC. In Europe, millet was reported in Early Neolithic contexts formed by 6000 BC, but recent radiocarbon dating...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-70495-z

The practice of harvesting green grains is known worldwide and, although it implies a higher investment of labour than collecting them ripe, it presents some advantages such as the possibility to extend the harvest time or to secure one year's crop yield in case of, for instance, bad weather close to ripening. However, the presence of green-harvest...

The consumption of olives, figs, and grapes in El Argar territory (2200–1550 CAL BC) has been suggested through carpological analysis. Currently, there are 22 settlements with archaeobotanical studies of seeds and fruits; most of them present parallel anthracological analyses. There is a lack of wood finds of the mentioned species in some of the an...

The detection of direct archaeological remains of alcoholic beverages and their production is still a challenge to archaeological science, as most of the markers known up to now are either not durable or diagnostic enough to be used as secure proof. The current study addresses this question by experimental work reproducing the malting processes and...

Charring is the most common preservation state of plant remains retrieved at archaeological sites. Therefore, archaeobotanists have often performed charring experiments mainly aimed to produce comparative materials and to better understand the various processes affecting the morphology and composition of archaeobotanical assemblages. In this paper,...

Within the scope of ERC Project PLANTCULT we organized an international workshop “Ancient beer: multidisciplinary approaches for its identification in the archaeological record” at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart. At the IWGP, we want to present a summary and the results of the discussions during this workshop. Traditionally, malt finds in...

Cereals, in addition to being a major ingredient in daily meals, also play a role in the preparation of foodstuffs for ritual purposes. This paper deals with finds that may correspond to such ritual preparations retrieved from the hillfort site of Stillfried an der March. The site, spreading across an area of ca. 23 ha, held a very important positi...

Different ways have been used by human societies to transform cereals into food: gruels, porridges, soups, breads, alcoholic beverages are examples of the rich variability observed in ancient and modern culinary practice. Our presentation explores the possible ways in which cereals could have been consumed in antiquity, integrating ancient written...

Cultivation of broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum L.) was a widespread practice in later European prehistory. When and how this ‘crop from the East’ was introduced to the continent and spread across it has not been determined. So far, based on the relative chronology of millet finds and a small set of radiocarbon-dated caryopses, it has been sugge...

The results of pollenanalytical and archaeobotanical studies presented here show the development of vegetation in the state of Brandenburg, which was characterized by the climate and the associated natural spread of plants as well as the use of the resource forest by man. The plant food of humans was first obtained by gathering and, since the begin...

The aim of this work is (1) to identify the key characteristics of agriculture and the role of olive in Porcuna (Andalusia) of Roman period and (2) to derive a conclusion about the origin of cultivated olive. The study of the literature showed that the olive is one of the most esteemed fruit species in the Classical Mediterranean world and is consi...

Plant foods have sustained human populations for millennia across the globe. Project PLANTCULT: Investigating the Food Cultures of Ancient Europe, funded by the European Research Council aims to investigate plant ingredients, plant foods and their culinary transformation and change through time. Through an interdisciplinary investigation of plant f...

The 18 samples from Porcuna, covering Ibero-Roman (2nd/ 1st c. BC) until Flavian times (end of the 1 st c. AD) , though resulting in 19.086 plant remains, display only a subset of the domesticated and useful plants which are to be expected for this time and period. Four cereal species were found, namely oats (Avena cf. sativa), barley (Hordeum vulg...

Archaeobotanical analysis of Copper and Bronze Age sediments from the excavations of El Berral and Los Alcores in Porcuna resulted in more than 1 0,000 remains of cultivated and wild plants. Among the cereals, naked barley, naked wheat (bread wheat and/or compact wheat) and hulled wheats (einkorn and emmer) were found. Naked barley is also document...

Porcuna is located in the province of Jaén, in the transition zone between the Upper and the Lower Andalusia. In this paper we present the samples of the archaeological sites with chronologies of the Age of Copper and Bronze El Berral and Los Alcores, as well as of the deposits of Roman period San Benito and Cantarero. During these times, agricultu...

The site of Parkhaus Opéra is located on the north-eastern shore of Lake Zürich (Switzerland) and was documented during a rescue excavation in 2010 and 2011 by the Office for Urbanism, City of Zürich. Two charred bread-like objects were found in late Neolithic Layer 13 of the pile-dwelling, and are investigated using a novel set of analyses for cer...

Cavity measurements of find no. 2907. Raw data of the histogram in Figs 16 and 18. (XLSX)

Particle measurements of find no. 2285. Raw data of the histogram in Figs 13 and 17. (XLSX)

Cavity measurements of find no. 2285. Raw data of the histogram in Figs 14 and 18. (XLSX)

Particle measurements of find no. 2907. Raw data of the histogram in Figs 15 and 17. (XLSX)

Plant foods are closely connected to cultural, social and economic aspects of human societies, both past and present. Food-preparation techniques and the etiquette of consumption involve complex interactions of natural resources and human cultures. During European prehistory, these changes included the shift to sedentism, the cultivation and domest...

This study uses two novel archaeobotanical techniques – crop carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis and functional weed ecology – to determine directly how the intensity of agricultural practice changed from the Neolithic to the Early Iron Age in south-west Germany, with the emergence of fortified hilltop settlements (Fürstensitze or chiefly seats) r...

Zusammenfassung Vorgestellt wird der Versuch einer präziseren Datierung des Erdwerks von Heilbronn-Klingenberg “Schlossberg” am mittleren Neckar. Die angewendete Methode empfiehlt sich als Ausgangspunkt für weitere Untersuchungen zur Datierung und Belegungsdauer anderer Michelsberger Erdwerke des späten 5. bis frühen 4. Jahrtausends calBC. Vom Erdw...

In prehistoric agrarian societies of semi-arid southwestern Spain, land-use management depends on the different landscapes under cultivation primarily being influenced by the amount of precipitation and water availability. Furthermore, societal organisation and hierarchical structures might have been factors for the choices of the applied subsisten...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

Environmental archaeology has been efficiently demonstrating that land-use management strategies of prehistoric agrarian societies do often differ considerably between regions and periods, and so do their impacts on the landscapes. However, especially when it comes to supra-regional comparative studies involving modelling, or general questions on t...

Einleitung und Zielstellung: Im Rahmen des Forschungsprojekts „Sizandro - Alcabrichel river valleys: Two neolithic settlement areas in comparison” des DAI/Madrid wird seit 2001 ein zeitlich und räumlich hochauflösendes Entwicklungsszenario des Unterlaufs des Rio Sizandro erarbeitet. Dabei sollen u.a. sozioökonomische Hintergründe für die Entwicklun...

The Bronze Age in Europe has been the subject for some books over the years, including Coles and Harding’s The Bronze Age in Europe and Jacques Briard’s The Bronze Age in Barbarian Europe. This handbook aims to add relevant information about the Bronze Age, and covers Bronze Age Europe outside the Aegean area. It is split into two main parts, which...

Current archaeobotanical work concerning Bronze Age excavations at Tossene-Tanum in Sweden, Legård-Thy in Denmark, Lossow-Frankfurt/Oder in Germany, Százhalombatta-Földvár in Hungary and La Bastida-Totana in Spain inspired us to review crop production in whole Europe. For the general overview on plant cultivation in Bronze Age Europe, 229 archaeobo...

Cultivated plants have long been considered as the main foundation of human nutrition. This article assesses the regional dominance and basic importance of several crops in Bronze Age Europe. The discussion is limited to rough regional classifications of the Early, Middle, and Late Bronze Age, and the three main groups of cultivated crops most impo...

Nigella (Ranunculaceae) is a small genus of annuals mainly of Irano-Turanian distribution, but some species also extending across most of Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia. The genus comprises several taxa of ethnopharmacological interest, as their seeds are used in a wide range of medicinal contexts – those of N. sativa have even developed...

Archaeobotanical analysis of the MBA (Middle Bronze Age) tell of Százhalombatta-Földvár (Hungary) shows that einkorn (Triticum monococcum) and hulled barley (Hordeum vulgare) were the main cereals of the period, accompanied by “new type” hulled wheat (Triticum cf. timopheevi) and emmer (T. dicoccum) as subdominant cereals. Spelt (T. spelta), broomc...

Archaeobotanical analyses accompanied several excavation campaigns in Kristian Kristiansen’s international projects. The specific questions addressed in these analyses ranged from understanding past subsistence strategies in general to the spatial organisation of settlements and inside buildings, and, finally, also to issues of trade and of factors...

Archaeobotanical data on Bronze Age agriculture were evaluated for nine regions in Europe, in order to provide an up-to-date basis for future research of the subject. In total, more than 1,500 data sets from 229 sites were included in the analysis, corresponding to ca. 2.3 million finds of cultivated plants. Data evaluation was carried out using a...

Cultivated plants have long been considered as the main foundation of human nutrition. This article assesses the regional dominance and basic importance of several crops in Bronze Age Europe. The discussion is limited to rough regional classifications of the Early, Middle, and Late Bronze Age, and the three main groups of cultivated crops most impo...

Plant macro-remains and pollen from Slavic settlement sites on the lower middle Elbe Out of ten excavations in the region of the lower Central Elbe, almost 300 probes were analyzed for botanical macroremains that relate to the period from the seventh to the twelfth century AD and primarily come from the High Middle Ages. The three main cereals of t...

Evidence of mead is given by pollen analysis from late Hallstatt period (7th-5th cen. BC) in southern Germany. At the nobles burial sites of Eberdingen-Hochdorf, Heuneburg, Glauberg, and Niedererlbach among other outstanding grave gifts residues in bronze vessels were analysed to consist of a large amount of pollen and wax indicating the ritual use...

In this paper, we discuss specialised ditch structure from the early Iron Age settlement of Eberdingen–Hochdorf (early La Tène Period, fifth–fourth century BC), that contained large numbers of evenly germinated hulled barley grains. This malt appears to be the result of deliberate germination, given the purity of the finds and the associated unusua...

Sofaer, Joanna, Bech, J.-H., Budden, S., Choyke, A., Eriksen, B. V., Horvath, T., Kovacs, G., Kreiter, A., Muhlenbock, C. and Sticka, H.-P. 2010: Technology and craft. In: Earle, T. and Kristiansen, K. (eds.) Organising Bronze Age Societies. European Society in Late Prehistory: A Comparative Approach. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 185-...

For the early Iron Age Elymian town on Monte Polizzo, inland western Sicily, hulled barley was the dominant cereal, followed by emmer and free-threshing wheat. The dominant legume was Vicia faba. In the contemporary Greek harbour town of Selinunte on the southern coast of western Sicily, free-threshing wheat was dominant, while hulled barley and th...

For the early Iron Age Elymian town on Monte Polizzo, inland western Sicily, hulled barley was the dominant cereal, followed by emmer and free-threshing wheat. The dominant legume was Vicia faba. In the contemporary Greek harbour town of Selinunte on the southern coast of western Sicily, free-threshing wheat was dominant, while hulled barley and th...

During early Iron Age in western Sicily three different ethnic groups were settling in close vicinity: the indigenous Elymians as well as Greek and Phoenician/Punic colonies. Within the EU-project "Emergence of European Societies" and together with American universities (Stanford University, Northern Illinois University) Elymian sites on Monte Poli...

At the early Neolithic sites of La Lámpara and La Revilla del Campo in the northern Meseta of Central Spain evidence for agriculture from the last third of the sixth millennium cal B.C. was found. The hulled wheats einkorn ( Triticum monococcum ) and emmer ( Triticum dicoccum ) could be identified from carbonised plant remains as well as from impri...

Macro-remains Analyses on pollen profiles from Ambrona and Mino de Medinaceli (Province of Soria). The macro-remain analyses on pollen profiles furnish a long list of species reflecting the vegetation close to the wet sediments. The determined taxa inform about the aquatic phases in the lagunas of the Ambrona and Mino de Medinaceli valleys. In comb...

At the early Neolithic sites of La Lámpara and La Revilla del Campo in the northern Meseta of Central Spain evidence for agriculture from the last third of the sixth millennium cal B.C. was found. The hulled wheats einkorn (Triticum monococcum) and emmer (Triticum dicoccum) could be identified from carbonised plant remains as well as from imprints...

The macro-remain analyses on pollenprofiles furnish a long list of species reflecting the vegetation close to the wet sediments. The determined taxa inform about the aquatic phases in the lagunas of the Ambrona and Miño de Medinaceli valleys. In combination with the results of pollen analyses and the study of macro-remains from Neolithic settlement...

The early Neolithic sites of La Lámpara and La Revilla del Campo in the Meseta Norte (Northern Meseta) plateau in central Spain produced evidence for early agriculture from the last third of the 6th millennium B.C. The hulled wheats Triticum monococcum (einkorn) and T. dicoccum (emmer) were identified from carbonised plant remains as well as from i...

La difusión de la agricultura en la Península Ibérica se registra desde al menos c. 5500-5200 cal BC aunque la información carpológica es inexistente o incompleta para amplias zonas. Los datos arqueobotánicos reflejan un sistema agrario importado que se muestra complejo desde un primer momento. Sin embargo, el panorama agrícola con anterioridad al...

The spread of agriculture in the Iberian Peninsula is documented from at least ca. 5600–5500BC, although botanical data are absent or very limited for large areas. Archaeobotanical information shows from the beginning an imported agrarian system with a great diversity of crops: hulled and naked wheats and barleys, legumes such as pea, lentil, fava...

Late Holocene climatic changes caused a large scale regression of the Lake Chad shoreline followed by an expansion of settlements into previously unexplored territories. Numerous Final Stone Age sites of the Gajiganna Culture (1,800 to 800 b.c.) in the Lake Chad Basin (northeast Nigeria) yielded plant impressions in potsherds. The ceramics of Phase...