Leilani Lucas

• PhD Archaeology
• Professor at College of Southern Nevada

Our understanding of the timing and dynamics of the spread of human populations to the island of Cyprus has changed significantly in the last few decades. Ongoing research on a few sites has provided more detail not only on when the initial explorers and farming populations arrived, but also on how the unique culture of prehistoric Cyprus developed...

Abstract. This paper addresses the range of subsistence strategies in the protracted transition to agriculture in Southwest Asia. Discussed and defined here are the intermediate economies that can be characterized by a mixed-subsistence economy of wild plant exploitation, fruit cultivation and crop agriculture. Archaeobotanical data from sites loca...

After the domestication of plants and animals, the subsequent spread of agriculture represented a process of adaptation of both species and landscapes. Crop species moved beyond their original ecological limits, and their range expansion, when successful, was generally the result of adaptive post-domestication genetic changes on the part of the pla...

Charred plant remains from the Cypriot Pre-Pottery Neolithic site of Krittou Marottou ‘Ais Yiorkis, situated in the foothills of the Troödos Mountains and dated to ca. 7500cal. b.c., demonstrate the early introduction of two-grained einkorn (Triticum monococcum sensu lato). Grain measurements of two-grained einkorn from ‘Ais Yiorkis are compared to...

Significance Agriculture was a transformative development in the history of human societies and natural environments and drove the evolution of new domesticated species. Crop plants are the predominant domesticated species in most agricultural systems and are an essential component in all the food production systems that underpinned the development...

The site of Jarmo in Iraqi Kurdistan has yielded key archaeological evidence which supports its interpretation as a large PPNB village. As such, it is the perfect candidate for the study of early agriculture, plant uses, food preparation and cooking practices. In order to explore these, new excavations and intensive sampling and flotation for the r...

This paper provides an overview of changing agricultural systems from the Neolithic to the Post-Meroitic Period in the greater Nubian region. There remain major gaps in the archaeobotanical evidence, and larger samples collected by systematic sieving and flotation are few and far between. Gaps in our knowledge include the initial establishment of t...

Current archaeobotanical research in Cyprus demonstrates a deviation from the mainland trajectory highlighting a prolonged period of mixed-subsistence economy of small-scale intensive garden cultivation and hunting to one that is reliant on crop-agriculture and intensive livestock herding. There is evidence for the spread of intensive mixed farming...

The article The Transition from Hunting–Gathering to Food Production in the Gamo Highlands of Southern Ethiopia

This chapter presents the results from charred macro-botanical remains from Chalcolithic Souskiou Laona. Radiocarbon dates derived from individual specimens of charred pistachio, grape, olive and barley range from c. 3100 and c. 2900 BC. Included in the chapter is a description of the archaeobotanical assemblage and a comparison to data recovered f...

Over three field seasons between 2007 and 2012, we excavated three caves—Mota, Tuwatey, and Gulo—situated at an average elevation of 2,084 m above sea level in the cool and moist Boreda Gamo Highlands of southwestern Ethiopia. Anthropogenic deposits in these caves date from the Middle to Late Holocene (ca. 6000 to 100 BP) and provide excellent pres...

Our understanding of the timing and dynamics of the spread of populations to the island of Cyprus has changed significantly in the last few decades. Recent research on a few sites has provided not only more detail on when the initial explorers and farming populations arrived, but also how the unique culture of prehistoric Cyprus developed. One key...

Domestication is the process by which plants or animals evolved to fit a human-managed environment, and it is marked by innovations in plant morphology and anatomy that are in turn correlated with new human behaviours and technologies for harvesting, storage and field preparation. Archaeobotanical evidence has revealed that domestication was a prot...

For the first time we integrate quantitative data on lithic sickles and archaeobotanical evidence for domestication and the evolution of plant economies from sites dated to the terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene (ca. 12000–5000 cal. BCE) from throughout the Fertile Crescent region of Southwest Asia. We find a strong correlation in some regions...

The domestication of wild species that sustained hunter-gatherers, as happened with cereals, is a prime example of cultural and ecological entanglement. As humans relied more on a narrower range of species for calories, the changes associated with their processing required them to engage in different behavioral patterns. In turn, the species themse...

The period from the late third millennium BC to the start of the first millennium AD witnesses the first steps towards food globalization in which a significant number of important crops and animals, independently domesticated within China, India, Africa and West Asia, traversed Central Asia greatly increasing Eurasian agricultural diversity. This...

Significance The prehistoric settlement of Madagascar by people from distant Southeast Asia has long captured both scholarly and public imagination, but on the ground evidence for this colonization has eluded archaeologists for decades. Our study provides the first, to our knowledge, archaeological evidence for an early Southeast Asian presence in...

The transition from foraging systems to agricultural dependence is a persistent focus of archaeological research, and the focus of a major research project supported by the European Research Council (ERC grant no. 323842, ’ComPAg’). Gordon Childe, director of the Institute of Archaeology 1947–1957, influentially defined the Neolithic revolution as...

It is difficult to overstate the cultural and biological impacts that the domestication of plants and animals has had on our species. Fundamental questions regarding where, when, and how many times domestication took place have been of primary interest within a wide range of academic disciplines. Within the last two decades, the advent of new archa...

Recent archaeobotanical results from early Aceramic Neolithic sites on Cyprus (c. 8,500 cal. BC) have put the island in the forefront of debates on the spread of Near Eastern agriculture, with domestic crops appearing on the island shortly after they evolved. The archaeobotanical results from these early Cypriot Aceramic Neolithic sites changed con...