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 the legume V. ervilia were subdominant. For Selinunte, an import of cereals from the Elymians is suggested. The investigated area around the agora (marketplace) yielded a processed cereal product and edible fruit as the predominantly consumed plantbased food in Selinunte. Its hinterland most probably provided space for large-scale maintenance of horses and oxen as well as for stock breeding for consumption. At ''House 1'' on Monte Polizzo, the archaeobotanical record matches well with the archaeological interpretation of different rooms used for ritual consumption, everyday life, crop processing and crop storage. During feasts in the style of Greek symposia, grapes and figs were consumed. The Elymians most probably adopted olive cultivation quite late. The charcoal analyses, mainly of roof beams from Monte Polizzo residential contexts, point to a sufficient availability of undisturbed natural climax woodland for timberwork.

Abstract. This paper discusses archaeobotanical remains from the s'ettlement mound of Kursakata, Nigeria, comprising both charred and uncharred seeds and fruits as well as charcoal. In addition, impressions of plant tempering material in potsherds were analysed. The late Stone Age and Iron Age sequence at Kursakata is dated from 1000 cal. B.C. to cal. A.D. 100. Domesticated Pennisetum (pearl millet), wild Paniceae and wild rice are the most common taxa. Kernels from'tree fruits were regularly found including large numbers of Vitex simplicifolia -a tree which is absent from the area today. A distinct change in plant spectra can be observed between the late Stone Age and the Iron Age. Although domesticated pearl millet was already known at the beginning of the settlement sequence of Kursakata, it only gained greater economic importance during the Iron Age. Besides farming, pastoralism and fishing, gathering of wild plants always played a major role in the subsistence strategy of the inhabitants of Kursakata. The charcoal results show that firewood was mainly collected from woodlands on the clay plains, which must have been more diverse than today. The end of the late Stone Age in the Chad Basin was presumably accompanied by the onset of drier environmental conditions from ca. 800 cal. B.C. onwards.

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