If the Threshing Floor Could Talk: Integration of Agriculture and Pastoralism during the Late Harappan in Gujarat, India

Reddy, Seetha N.

doi:10.1006/jaar.1997.0308

Cited by 72 publications

(52 citation statements)

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“…Weber 1989Weber , 2003Willcox 1991Willcox , 1992Reddy 1994Reddy , 1997Reddy , 2003. All three approaches aim to standardise archaeobotanical data sets to make comparisons possible, as they often originate from different context types and from samples of different sizes (Miller 1988).…”

Section: Quantifying Archaeobotanical Datasetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Fuller and Madella 2002). However, despite this growing corpus of data, many researchers seeking to characterise Indus agriculture still refer to a core-periphery model, which was developed using data from the site of Harappa (Weber 1992(Weber , 1997(Weber , 2003, combined with datasets several sites in from Gujarat (Weber 1989(Weber , 1991Reddy 1994Reddy , 1997Reddy , 2003. A different pattern has been Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s12520-017-0489-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cereals, calories and change: exploring approaches to quantification in Indus archaeobotany

Bates

Petrie

2017

Archaeol Anthropol Sci

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Several major cereal groups have been identified as staples used by the pre-urban, urban and post-urban phase populations of the Indus Civilisation (3200-1500 BCE): wheat, barley, a range of small hulled millets and also rice, though their proportional exploitation is variable across space and over time. Traditional quantification methods examine the frequency, intensity and proportionality of the use of these crops and help ascertain the 'relative importance' of these cereals for Indus populations. However, this notion of 'importance' is abstracted from the daily lives of the people using these crops and may be biased by the differential production (as well as archaeological survival) of individual cereals. This paper outlines an alternative approach to quantifying Indus cereals by investigating proportions of calories. Cereals are predominantly composed of carbohydrates and therefore provided much of the daily caloric intake among many late Holocene farming populations. The four major cereal groups cultivated by Indus farmers, however, vary greatly in terms of calories per grain, and this has an impact on their proportional input to past diets. This paper demonstrates that, when converted to proportions of calories, the perceived 'importance' of cereals from five Indus sites changes dramatically, reducing the role of the previously dominant small hulled millet species and elevating the role of Triticoid grains. Although other factors will also have affected how a farmer perceived the role and importance of a crop, including its ecological tolerances, investments required to grow it, and the crop's role in the economy, this papers suggests that some consideration of what cereals meant in terms of daily lives is needed alongside the more abstracted quantification methods that have traditionally been applied.

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Section: Quantifying Archaeobotanical Datasetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cereals, calories and change: exploring approaches to quantification in Indus archaeobotany

Bates

Petrie

2017

Archaeol Anthropol Sci

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“…Whether crops are preserved is also partly dependent on the specific requirements for their use, for instance, hulled millets and pulses like Vigna sp. and Macrotyloma uniflorum require parching to make the hulls more fragile before removal (Reddy 1997(Reddy , 2003Fuller and Harvey 2006). In contrast, many cereals (e.g.…”

Section: Differentiating Indus Cropping Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(data obtained by deriving percentages from the densities in Reddy 2003, p. 122). Weed species are published from this site (Reddy 1997(Reddy , 2003, but statistical analysis of the relationship between the weed ecology and cropping practices has not yet been attempted. Millets, including Panicum miliare and Setaria italica, were the main crops throughout the sequence, with the dominant species being dependent on period of occupation and context (Reddy 2003, pp.…”

Section: Babar Kotmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Multi-cropping’, Intercropping and Adaptation to Variable Environments in Indus South Asia

Petrie

Bates

2017

J World Prehist

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Past human populations are known to have managed crops in a range of ways. Various methods can be used, singly or in conjunction, to reconstruct these strategies, a process which lends itself to the exploration of socio-economic and political themes. This paper endeavours to unpack the concept of 'multi-cropping' by considering diversity and variation in the cropping practices of the populations of South Asia's Indus Civilisation. It argues that nuanced interpretations of the evidence provided by the combinations of crop seeds and weeds present in specific contexts and phases of occupation can reveal much about Indus cropping strategies, which in turn enables consideration of issues related to adaptation, intensification and resilience in the face of changing social, political, economic and environmental climates.

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“…Anderson et al 2003;Anderson-Gerfaud 1991;D'Andrea 2003;D'Andrea and Haile 2002;Hastorf 1988Hastorf , 1998Johanessen et al 1990;Butler et al 1999;Peña-Chocarro 1999;Peña-Chocarro and Zapata Peña 2003;Peña-Chocarro et al 2009;Stevens 2003;van der Veen 1992), similar methodologies have also been implemented in the Far East and South Asia, e.g. ethnographic research on millet crop processing in Nepal and India by Lundström-Baudais et al (2002) and Reddy (1997), respectively, and Thompson's (1998) study of rice crop processing in Thailand. Moreover, not only plant macroremains but also, for the first time, micro-remains, such as phytoliths, have been used to investigate crop-processing in the work of Harvey and Fuller (2005).…”

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confidence: 99%

After the harvest: investigating the role of food processing in past human societies

Capparelli

Valamoti

Wollstonecroft

2011

Archaeol Anthropol Sci

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Plant processing provides an essential framework for archaeobotanical interpretation since practices of processing lie between the ancient acquisition of plants and the preserved remains of archaeology. Crop-processing stages have received much attention as they contribute towards the interpretation of plants recovered from archaeological sites, linking them to routine human activities that generated these plant remains. Yet, there are many other important aspects of the human past that can be explored through food processing studies that are much less often investigated, e.g. how culinary practices may have influenced resource selection, plant domestication and human diet, health, evolution and cultural identity. Therefore, this special issue of AAS on "Food Processing Studies in Archaeobotany and Ethnobotany" brings together recent pioneering methodological and interpretive archaeobotanical approaches to the study of ancient food processing. This new research, which involves archaeobotany, ethnoarchaeology, ethnobotany and experimental methods, encompasses investigations into dietary choice, cultural traditions and cultural change as well as studies of the functional properties (i.e. performance characteristics) of edible plants, and the visibility as well as dietary benefits and consequences of different food processing methods.This volume builds on a history of experimental food processing in archaeobotany that dates back almost 40 years. Dennell (1972Dennell ( , 1976 was the first to model explicitly the importance of plant processing activities in shaping the archaeobotanical record. However, it was Hillman (see Willcox 2009; Hillman 1973Hillman , 1981Hillman , 1984 who, using an ethnoarchaeological approach, pioneered methods for linking the archaeobotanical record with the types of human plant-use activities that they potentially represent. As a result of his observations of the nonmechanised crop-processing techniques used by modern Turkish farmers, and his systematic sampling of the macrobotanical materials produced during each stage in the cropprocessing sequence, Hillman found that each stage produces a distinct plant assemblage that can be recognised from the specific types and condition of the plant parts represented. Building on Hillman's methods, Jones (1984Jones ( , 1987

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If the Threshing Floor Could Talk: Integration of Agriculture and Pastoralism during the Late Harappan in Gujarat, India

Cited by 72 publications

References 0 publications

Cereals, calories and change: exploring approaches to quantification in Indus archaeobotany

Cereals, calories and change: exploring approaches to quantification in Indus archaeobotany

‘Multi-cropping’, Intercropping and Adaptation to Variable Environments in Indus South Asia

After the harvest: investigating the role of food processing in past human societies

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