Plant Supplying Strategies in an Islamic Omani Harbour City: Archaeobotanical Analysis from a Workshop (B39) in Qalhāt (XIVth-XVIth c. AD)

Abstract

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Comparable quantification methodologies in archaeobotany – a work-in-progress and debate

“…Rather than thinking about the 'type' of plant we are looking at (cereal/ et al 2018), but how these are comparable is not clear due to such a diverse choice of descriptors. It logically follows that with complex morphology seen in the vast number of wild taxa exploited at sites, wild plants are commonly oversimplified as just "seed" or "caryopsis", with few publications distinguishing "endocarp fragment" (Tengberg 1999), "nutlet" (Dabrowski et al 2018) or "nut" (Pokharia et al 2017a).…”

“…The impact of a focus on 'economic value' can be seen where researchers have tried to tackle describing noncereals. Very little explicit discussion of the quantification methodology is seen across papers and instead regarding fruits (for example), a vast range of terms are often used to represent the parts seen (Table 1): "stone", "endocarp fragment", "spine" (Tengberg 1999); "seed", "drupe fragment", "achene", "stone fragment", "pip" (Decaix et al 2019) or "stone", "stone with skin", "stone with pericarp", "stone skin", "endocarp" (Dabrowski et al 2018) to name but a few. This can often make it unclear what the actual counting criteria are for each of these categories.…”

Crop processing, consumption and trade of Asian rice (Oryza sativa L.) in the Arabian Peninsula during Antiquity: earliest evidence from Mleiha (third c. AD), United Arab Emirates

“…Figure 7: Simplified schema of the main crop-processing stages from the state of spikelet to white grain (framed words= prime products; smaller words= by-products; bold words= main steps of rice-processing before consumption; italic words= description of these previous steps) (according to Thompson 1996) Rice in the Indian Ocean trade Before the discovery of rice at Mleiha only two other archaeobotanical finds of the species have been reported from the Arabian Peninsula: a unique fragmented grain found in a medieval (10 th -12 th c. AD) storehouse at Sharma in Hadramawt (Yemen) (Dabrowski et al 2015) and several grains as well as one dessicated lemma and palea fragment from a workshop in the Islamic (14 th -16 th c. AD) harbour city of Qalhât (Sultanate of Oman) (Dabrowski et al 2018). Both of them have been tentatively interpreted as imported items as both sites were important harbours connected with remote rice-producing areas.…”

“…Ibādī manuscripts and other texts mention rice cultivation in Arabia well before the modern period (Ubaydli 1993). Furthermore, if it seems more likely that the rice discoveries from Qalhât correspond to imported products since it is a harbour which occupied an important place within the Indian Ocean trade, a part of it also might come from local agriculture (Dabrowski et al 2018). Baron von Kniphausen reports on rice cultivation in the date palm groves growing on the island of Bahrain in 1754 (Floor 1984: 138).…”