ArchbotLit—the archaeobotanical literature database: an update of the search engine for literature on archaeological remains of cultivated plants since 1981

Abstract

The online Archaeobotanical Literature Database (ArchbotLit) is an important tool for getting targeted access to archaeobotanical publications. It offers the opportunity for archaeobotanists, archaeologists, freelancers, students and an interested public to easily obtain information about cultivated plants and their development. In addition it increases the visibility of archaeobotanical studies beyond the inner circle and supports teaching in environmental archaeology. The ArchbotLit database builds upon the efforts of Jürgen Schultze-Motel, Gatersleben, and Helmut Kroll, Kiel, who have collected offprints of papers from archaeobotanists worldwide since the 1980s. The content was transferred into referenced plant lists that were published annually from 1992 to 2001 in the central organ of the “International Workgroup for Palaeoethnobotany (IWGP)”, the journal “Vegetation History and Archaeobotany” and as contributions entitled “Literature on archaeological remains of cultivated plants”. These were succeeded by the online database “archaeobotany.de”, comprising the literature from 1981 to 2004. To sustain this online-database in the public domain it was recently converted into the wiki-platform “ArchbotLit”, hosted at Kiel University. Here, we introduce the new wiki-online-database and its functionalities for data upload and as a search engine.

Fossil or non‐fossil? A best‐practice guide for archaeobotanical taxa

“…The adopted nomenclature in these databases and reviews, and the reviewed papers were based on non‐fossil taxa. ArchbotLit was recently converted into a wiki‐platform hosted at Kiel University (Kirleis & Schmütz, 2018). The most important backbone for the ArchbotLit database is its list of taxa and synonyms.…”

“…The most important backbone for the ArchbotLit database is its list of taxa and synonyms. The predetermined taxa list is based upon the catalogue, “Mansfeld's World Database of Agricultural and Horticultural Crops”, which contains information on 6100 non‐fossil crop plant species (IPK, 2020; Kirleis & al., 2021).…”