Microbotanical Evidence of Domestic Cereals in Africa 7000 Years Ago

Abstract

The study of plant exploitation and early use of cereals in Africa has seen over the years a great input from charred and desiccated macrobotanical remains. This paper presents the results of one of the few examples in Africa of microbotanical analyses. Three grave contexts of phytolith-rich deposits and the dental calculus of 20 individuals were analysed from two Neolithic cemeteries in North and Central Sudan. The radiocarbon-dated phytoliths from the burial samples show the presence of Near East domestic cereals in Northern Sudan at least 7000 years ago. Phytoliths also indicate the exploitation of wild, savannah-adapted millets in Central Sudan between 7500 and 6500 years ago. The calculus samples contained starch grains from wheat/barley, pulses and millets, as well as panicoid phytoliths. This evidence shows that Near East domestic cereals were consumed in Northern Africa at least 500 years earlier than previously thought.

Lakeside View: Sociocultural Responses to Changing Water Levels of Lake Turkana, Kenya

“…Domesticated plants and animals appear in the Fayum region of northern Egypt by 7,400 years BP (Linseele et al 2014) and domesticated cereals had been introduced from the Near East by 7,000 years BP in northern Sudan (Madella et al 2014). Long-distance exchange networks across northeastern Africa from this period, accompanied by diverse subsistence strategies and nascent adoption of domesticates, suggest that cultural solutions to Middle Holocene climatic variability involved migrating between resource patches.…”

Holocene Supra-Regional Environmental Changes as Trigger for Major Socio-Cultural Processes in Northeastern Africa and the Sahara

“…However, thanks to microbotanical discoveries at Cemetery R12, south of Kadruka in Upper Nubia, the introduction of domestic cereals in the Nile Valley, consumed along with wild species, now has been pre-dated by some centuries, to ca. 7 cal kyr BP (Madella et al 2014).…”

Back to the Grindstone? The Archaeological Potential of Grinding-Stone Studies in Africa with Reference to Contemporary Grinding Practices in Marakwet, Northwest Kenya

“…In Egypt and Sudan, southwest Asian cereal crops such as wheat and barley were consumed along with wild savannah-adapted millets ca. 7500-6500 BP (Madella et al 2014;Wetterstrom 1993). The earliest archaeobotanical evidence for an African domesticate similarly comes from the western Sahara/Sahel region, in the form of pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum) ca.…”