Infested stored crops in the Iron Age I granary at Tel Hadar

Abstract

Large quantities of charred seeds of field crops were found in a granary at early Iron Age (end of the eleventh century BCE) Tel Hadar, located at the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, Israel. They include mainly local naked wheat (Triticum parvicoccum), as well as bitter vetch (Vicia ervilia) and chickpea (Cicer arietinum) seeds. While the wheat was heavily infested by two major storage pest beetles À granary weevil (Sitophilus granarius) and a newcomer, the lesser grain borer (Rhyzopertha dominica) À the two pulses were much less infested. The presence of a large number of adults and larvae of R. dominica suggests that the granary was burned in mid or late summer. Seeds of the weed Lolium temulentum and several other weeds were also found.

Grass blindness

“…Estimates of the timeline of species divergence support a version of the origins of inbreeding Lolium weeds in which L. persicum invaded early cultivated fields and differentiated into L. remotum in flax and L. temulentum in cereals (Fuller & Stevens, ). As the result of co‐selection for traits that constitute the cereal domestication syndrome, including self‐fertility, L. temulentum became established as a potent mimic weed 'which was to haunt European farmers until the late Middle Ages' (Mabey, )—an anthropophyte or what Fuller and Stevens () call a “domesticoid.” Archaeobotanical studies of Pre‐Pottery Neolithic sites, principally in the Eastern Mediterranean region, have consistently found remains of L. temulentum grains within cereal assemblages, and also in the preserved excreta of domesticated animals, dating as far back as 20,000 years BCE (Greenberg et al, ; Hartmann‐Shenkman, Kislev, Galili, Melamed, & Weiss, ; Kislev, ; Koromila et al, ; Kotzamani & Livarda, ; Snir et al, ; Weide, Riehl, Zeidi, & Conard, ). The human‐ L. temulentum relationship is an ancient one, and L. temulentum was clearly entering the food chain in the earliest human settlements on a similar basis to other weeds like wild oat and rye (Fuller & Stevens, ; Harlan & de Wet, ; Ladzinsky, ); but unlike these species, it was never developed into a secondary crop species in its own right ‐ possibly because of growing awareness of its toxic properties.…”

Insect Pests of Pulse Crops and their Management in Neolithic Europe

“…Likewise, for cereals, grains with boreholes have seldomly been noted by archaeobotanists (e.g. Kislev 2015 ). Boreholes are likely to go unnoticed, since attacked grains may survive charring in a less recognisable form and the original hole may disappear due to the effects of charring (with the swelling of the endosperm), and they may be more fragile in terms of post-depositional taphonomic agents.…”

GUEST EDITORIAL: Studies in botanical archeology, ethno-botany and plant domestication: honoring Professor Daniel Zohary

“…In addition, it gives a personal testimony about working with Dani on the fourth edition of the book (Zohary et al 2012). The fourth paper (Kislev 2015) describes the weeds and insects that infested wheat during growing and storage in the Iron Age of Tel Hadar, a site located on the Eastern shore of Lake Kinneret. A rich insect fauna was found and identified, illuminating some of the difficulties in grain storage in Biblical times.…”