Why moving starch? Trans-Eurasian exchange of starchy crops in prehistory

Summary

Scholarly interest has increasingly focused on an episode of Old World globalization of food resources that significantly predates the ‘Silk Road’. The impetus behind this growth of interest has been the expansion of bio-archaeological research in Central and East Asia over the past decade. This paper considers the agents responsible for the food globalization process in prehistory and the forms they took. One of the key aspects of the Trans-Eurasian movements of crops in prehistory was that the movements were not to regions devoid of existing starch-based agriculture, but instead constituted an addition to that agricultural system. Other economic plants, such as grapes, dates and peas, also moved significant distances. However, the novel starchy crops held a particular significance; they went on to become significant staple foods in many of their new destinations. Drawn from recent discovery from western China, we will take into consideration differences in the projected archaeological signatures of different potential agents involved in transmission of the crops.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• The Dynamism of Contact and Exchange in Early Central and East Asia

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