This first monograph in the EARTH: The Dynamics of Non-Industrial Agriculture: 8,000 years of Resilience and Innovation series, approaches the great variety of agricultural practices in human terms. It focuses on the relationship between plants and people, the complexity of agricultural processes and their organisation within particular communities and societies. Collaborative European research among archaeologists, archaeobotanists, ethnographers, historians and agronomists using a broad analytical scale of investigation seeks to establish new common ground for integrating different approaches. By means of interdisciplinary examples, this book showcases the relationship between people and plants across wide ranging and diverse spatial and temporal milieus, including crop diversity, the use of wild foodstuffs, social context, status and choices of food plants.

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Esf Mission
• ESF member organisations funding the EARTH Networking Programme and publications
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Section 1: Methodological Approaches to Plant Use Diversity
  • Chapter 1: Factors and Issues in Plant Choice
  • Chapter 2: Exploring Diversity in the Past and in the Present
    • 2.1. Exploring Diversity in the Past: An Introduction
    • 2.2. Exploring Diversity Through Archaeobotany
    • 2.3. Exploring Diversity Through Written Sources
    • 2.4. Representing Nature: Images and Social Dynamics in Ancient Societies
    • 2.5. Exploring Diversity in the Present: Ethnobotany Studies
    • 2.6. Conclusions
• Section 2: Food Plants
  • Chapter 3: Crop Diversity Through Time
    • 3.1. Introduction
    • 3.2. Crop Diversity and Choice in Prehistoric Southeastern Europe: Cultural and Environmental Factors Shaping the Archaeobotanical Record of Northern Greece and Bulgaria
    • 3.3. Crop Diversity between Central Europe and the Mediterranean: Aspects of Northern Italian Agriculture
    • 3.4. Crop Diversity in Southwestern Central Europe from the Neolithic onwards
    • 3.5. Crop Diversity in the Neolithic of the Iberian Peninsula
    • 3.6. Choice of a Crop and its Underlying Reasons: Examples from Western Central Europe 500 BCE–CE 900
    • 3.7. Crops and Agricultural Developments in Western Europe
    • 3.8. Crop Diversity and Choice in the Prehistoric American Southwest
    • 3.9. Processes of Prehistoric Crop Diversification in the Lake Titicaca Basin of the South American Andes
    • 3.10. Conclusions
  • Chapter 4: Adding Diversity. Between Occasional Food and Speculative Productions: Diversity of Fruit Uses, Diversity of Practices Regarding Fruit Tree Cultivation
    • 4.1. Introduction
    • 4.2. Acorn Use in Native California
    • 4.3. A Wild Solution to Resilience and Provision: The Case of Prosopis spp. on the Peruvian North Coast
    • 4.4. Before the Empire: Prehistoric Fruit Gathering and Cultivation in Northern Italy
    • 4.5. Citrus (Rutaceae) was Present in the Western Mediterranean in Antiquity
    • 4.6. From Secondary to Speculative Production? The Protohistory History of Viticulture in Southern France
    • 4.7. Fruit as Staple Food: The Role of Fig (Ficus carica L.) During the Pre-Hispanic Period of the Canary Islands, Spain (from the 3rd–2nd centuries BCE to the 15th century CE)
    • 4.8. Beyond the Divide Between Wild and Domesticated: Spatiality, Domesticity and Practices Pertaining to Fig (Ficus carica L.) and Olive (Olea europaea L.) Agroecosystems Among Jbala Communities in Northern Morocco
    • 4.9. Conclusions
  • Chapter 5: Food Plants from the Wild
    • 5.1. Introduction: Wild Food Plants in the Present and Past
    • 5.2. Gathering in a New Environment: The Use of Wild Food Plants During the First Colonisation of the Canary Islands, Spain (2nd–3rd century BCE to 15th Century CE)
    • 5.3. Wild Food Plants Traditionally Used in Spain: Regional Analysis
    • 5.4. Use of Wild Food Plant Resources in the Dogon Country, Mali
    • 5.5. Silverweed: a Food Plant on the Road from Wild to Cultivated?
    • 5.6. Cleome: a Wild Plant as Complement to Cultigens in Southwestern North America
    • 5.7. Conclusions
• Section 3: Food and Beyond
  • Chapter 6: A Versatile World: Examples of Diversity in Plant Use
    • 6.1. Introduction
    • 6.2. ‘Humble Plants’: Uses of Furze and Nettles in the British Isles (and Beyond)
    • 6.3. Versatile Hulled Wheats: Farmers’ Traditional Uses of Three Endangered Crop Species in the Western Mediterranean
    • 6.4. Use of Crop-Processing By-Products for Tempering in Earthen Construction Techniques
    • 6.5. Uses of the Wild Grass Ampelodesmos mauritanica in Northwestern Tunisia Today
    • 6.6. Uses of the Mastic Tree (Pistacia lentiscus L.) in the West Mediterranean Region: An Example from Sardinia, Italy
    • 6.7. Ancient and Modern Boat Caulking: Use of Oleoresins in Tropical Asia
    • 6.8. Conclusions
  • Chapter 7: Plants Used in Ritual Offerings and in Festive Contexts
    • 7.1. Introduction
    • 7.2. Hidden Stone – A Unique Bread Offering from an Early Medieval Cremation Grave at Lovö, Sweden
    • 7.3. Ceremonial Foodstuff from Prehistoric Burnt-Offering Places in the Alpine Region
    • 7.4. Festive Use of Plants: A Diachronic Glimpse of May Day in the British Isles, France and Slightly Beyond
    • 7.4a. Common Plant Names, Now and Then – The Botanical Viewpoint
    • 7.5. Ceremonial Plants Among the Hopi in North America
    • 7.6. Ceremonial Plants in the Andean Region
    • 7.7. Conclusions
  • Chapter 8: Social Status, Identity and Contexts
    • 8.1. Introduction
    • 8.2. Plants for the Ancestors: Perpetuation of Social Status and Justification of Power in a Late Formative (400–100 BCE) Andean Group
    • 8.3. Plants in the Eastern Iberian Iron Age: From Daily Work to the Ideological Construction of the Community
    • 8.4. Social Status and Food Diet in Bibracte, Morvan (Burgundy, France)
    • 8.5. Symbol of Poverty? Children’s Evaluation of Wild Food Plants in Wayanad, India
    • 8.6. More than Simply Fallback Food? Social Context of Plant Use in the Northern German Neolithic
    • 8.7. Legal Constraints Influencing Crop Choice in Castile and Environs from Middle Ages to the 19th century: Some Examples
    • 8.8. Late Classic Maya Provisioning and Distinction in Northwestern Belize
    • 8.9. Conclusions
  • Chapter 9: Conclusions – Plants for Thoughts
• Annexes
• Contributors
• The EARTH Steering Committee (2004–2009)
• EARTH Programme Members
• Scientific Networking Workshops Contributing to the Contents of this Book