In an age where humans now alter, dominate or manipulate almost every ecological system on Earth, often with dramatic effects, understanding the processes, reach and resonance of earlier human-environment (H-E) interactions has clear implications for understanding more recent and long-term historical H-E interactions. As humans, we interact with our environments and engage in reciprocal relationships with landscapes, plants and animals, initiating long-term changes and feedbacks to our ecosystems. Termed ‘ecosystem engineering’ or ‘niche construction’, these cumulative efforts are part of a continuum of H-E interactions. The origin of agriculture marks one of the major H-E thresholds. Studying how earlier H-E interactions shaped this key transition is an essential and timely area of research.
This project, H-E Interactions, aimed to creatively employ a range of archaeobotanical techniques (phytoliths, starches and microcharcoals) and geoarchaeological methods (including micromorphology) on on- and off-site contexts to investigate the development and intensification of H-E interactions (i.e. increasing anthropogenic fire disturbance and other impacts related to human activity on the environment) through the Final Pleistocene and into the Early Holocene (ca. 23-8 ka cal. BP) in the Levant. By integrating the latest theoretical Human Niche Construction (HNC) perspectives with the tool-kit of environmental archaeology to investigate five well-excavated wetland oriented archaeological sites in the Southern Levant, the project aimed to consider if and how increasingly anthropogenic wetland landscapes, and the reliable resources within those environments, influenced the evolution of plant-food production and the origins of agriculture.
Two years of data collection and research by the ER has resulted in the preparation, mounting, imaging and measuring, of a robust starch (> 100 specimens) and phytolith (> 300 specimens) comparative collection for the Levant. This material has and is facilitating multidisciplinary analysis of ancient bread ‘crumbs’ (charred food remains), food processing residues on ground stone in close collaboration with use-wear specialists (n: >50 stones encompassing > 300 residue samples from six key sites in the region), and the analysis of on-site sediments (n: >300) from seven archaeological sites ranging from the Early Epipaleolithic through to the final stages of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic. The data being collected constitutes an extremely unique archaeobotanical database and is a major contribution to archaeological understandings of the transition to agriculture in the Levant as there is currently very limited direct botanical evidence in the region, particularly during the Epipaleolithic period.
This project and the archaeobotanical evidence being generated has also allowed the ER to develop her ideas regarding the long-term, cumulative impact of human niche construction. This work has been central to several large grant applications, including a successful Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, which will facilitate the ER’s continued research on H-E interactions in the Levant.
Finally, H-E Interactions has also initiated two unexpected, but exciting food-ways research avenues for the ER – residue analysis of ‘food crusts’ from some of the earliest Neolithic Pottery in the region in collaboration with Julien Vieugue (CNRS) as part of the French based CREASTONE project, and proteomics analysis of human teeth (‘prospecting’ to find evidence of human consumption of gazelle milk) at the site of Kharaneh IV in collaboration with Matthew Collins (UCAM and U. Copenhagen).
The project achieved most of its major research objectives: Determine how plant resource collection and processing strategies changes from the Early Epipaleolithic to the PPNB/PPNC, and reassess the origin of agriculture in the Levant in light of HNC perspectives and the latest archaeological and archaeobotanical evidence.
