The Influence of Pastoral Cultivation Strategies and Novel Cuisines on Newly Introduced Crops in Central Asia during the Bronze and Iron Ages

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

When crops are spread into new landscapes, communities, and their associated subsistence practices and culinary preferences, the crops undergo substantial selective pressure. This pressure can come in the form of new environmental constraints, such as a different growing season, or cultural pressure from differences in preferred taste, productivity, or cooking style. Recent research recognizes deep-seated culinary traditions on either side of the Eurasia landmass and the role these may have played in shaping cereal grains such as wheat, barley, and millet as they spread across the landmass between the 3rd and 1st millennium BC. In addition to cuisines, growing conditions such as watering and manuring (identified through stable isotope analysis of archaeological grains) impact the size and productivity of cereal crops. This paper investigates the relationship between novel cuisines and cultivation practices on cereal grain size as the domesticates were first introduced by pastoralist communities in Central Asia between the 3rd and 1st millennium BC through a metric analysis of grain size and Δ13C and δ15N stable isotope values.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36330.0