food globalization in prehistory

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Food globalization in prehistoryMartin Jones a , Harriet Hunt b , Emma Lightfoot b , Diane Lister b , Xinyi Liub & Giedre Motuzaite-Matuzeviciute ba University of Cambridge E-mail:b University of CambridgePublished online: 05 Dec 2011.

To cite this article: Martin Jones , Harriet Hunt , Emma Lightfoot , Diane Lister , Xinyi Liu & GiedreMotuzaite-Matuzeviciute (2011) Food globalization in prehistory, World Archaeology, 43:4, 665-675, DOI:10.1080/00438243.2011.624764

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Food globalization in prehistory

Martin Jones, Harriet Hunt, Emma Lightfoot, Diane Lister,Xinyi Liu and Giedre Motuzaite-Matuzeviciute

Abstract

Plant sources of starch have been domesticated in several parts of the world. By the secondmillennium BC in various parts of Eurasia, such starchy crops are encountered, not only around theirgeographical regions of origin, but also at considerable distances from them. Drawing on evidence

from across Eurasia, this paper explores this episode of food globalization in prehistory, comparablein the scale of its impact on global diets to the Columbian Exchange of historic times. Possiblereasons for the earlier episode of food globalization are discussed and situated within a broader

consideration of cross-continental contact in prehistory.

Keywords

Agriculture; archaeobotany; Asia; Neolithic; Bronze Age; globalization.

Introduction

It is now well established that agriculture arose independently in various distinct regions of

the world, and that, in subsequent episodes, those regions’ farming communities came into

contact with each other, in the process moving their crops and livestock into new regions.

The best-documented episode of contact was that following the European discovery of

America at the end of the fifteenth century AD. This ‘Columbian Exchange’ brought bread

wheat from the Old World to America, and maize from the New World to Africa and Asia

(Crosby 2003). Both crops subsequently became the principal food sources in their new

homes. Also crossing the Atlantic Ocean were pumpkins, squashes, peanuts and potatoes

from the New World, and rice, barley, oats, sugar cane and bananas from the Old World,

together with a range of fruits, vegetables, narcotics, livestock, pests and deadly diseases. In

the modern world, many of the highest yielding crops are grown largely outside the

continent from which they derived. The Columbian Exchange has profoundly shaped

global food production.

World Archaeology Vol. 43(4): 665–675 Debates in World Archaeology

ª 2011 Taylor & Francis ISSN 0043-8243 print/1470-1375 online

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2011.624764

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While episodes of this magnitude are few and far between, Andrew Sherratt (2006) has

drawn attention to an exchange of comparable significance in prehistory, which he labelled

‘the Trans-Eurasian Exchange’. Whereas the Columbian Exchange involved the crossing of a

great ocean, the Trans-Eurasian Exchange involved the crossing of a great landmass, one that

separated regional centres of agricultural emergence in Southwest Asia and China. This earlier

exchange had several elements, of which Sherratt mentions metallurgy, the keeping of horses

and other animals, and the exchange of crops and diseases. It was an exchange that would lay

the foundations for the overland routes subsequently described as the Silk Road (Franck and

Brownstone 1986). Drawing on the material culture record, Sherratt placed the threshold of

this exchange in the early second millennium BC, a time marked by developments in

metallurgical technique (see Hanks et al. 2007 for a refined chronology). In this paper, we

move the focus from thematerial culture evidence to the direct evidence of the crop plants that

moved, and put the case that Sherratt’s metallurgical horizon marks, not the threshold of the

Trans-Eurasian Exchange, but rather its culmination.

This metallurgical horizon is marked by developments in bronze-casting technology,

including the use of suspended bivalve moulds and the creation of complex 3D forms by

the lost wax method. Evidence of these novel casting technologies is found from the early

second millennium BC, from Europe to China and in Russia to a few degrees south of the

Arctic Circle. Sherratt argued that, prior to this episode, two cultural domains were

isolated within Eurasia, which he separated by the Pamir Mountains in Tajikistan. He

drew colourful connections between the eastern domain and the circulation of green stones

called ‘jade’ and between the western domain and the blue stone, lazurite (lapis lazuli),

along with fine metal objects of hammered silver and gold. Since Sherratt’s 2006 paper, the

record of another form of evidence has grown dramatically: the evidence of food crops.

While the majority of foodstuffs decay, bio-archaeological techniques such as flotation

and analyses of macro-fossils, micro-fossils and stable isotopes can reveal what was

grown, consumed, shared and moved around. The growing application of such methods

has given shape to a long prelude to the Eurasian Bronze Age, certainly lasting centuries,

in some cases millennia, in which the movement of food plants linked the entire landmass,

creating a series of interconnections against which we can better understand the

connections between subsequent more materially rich and visible societies.

A great number of economic plants have moved around Eurasia at various stages in

prehistory, but prominent among the early movers are a group of starchy staples. The

modern legacy of that movement is seen in several of our principal staples: bread wheat is

cultivated all across northern China, barley in high altitudes in the Himalayas, and rice is a

major crop from India to Indonesia, China and Japan. The globalization is also attested in

a range of crops that are today considered minor, including a range of small-grained

‘millets’. The earliest published records in three different regions of Eurasia of starchy

crops involved in this movement are summarized in Figure 1. In some cases, for example

wheat, their region of origin is uncontroversial; in others, for example the Asian millets,

those geographical origins are subject to ongoing debate (Le Thierry d’Ennequin et al.

2000; Zohary and Hopf 2000). For others, for example rice, the domestication status at

various times is also debated (Jiang and Liu 2006; Fuller and Qin 2009; Fuller et al. 2008,

2010). It is clear, however, that the range of all these crops becomes extensive during the

period under consideration.

666 Martin Jones et al.

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The globalization of food resources reviewed here may not have been exclusively about

starchy crops. Other economic plants, including grapes, dates, peas, lentils, flax and

mustard, probably also moved significant distances (Costantini 1984, 1990; Kajale 1991).

Humped zebu cattle were also transported from India to Africa, where their tolerance of

dry conditions was ecologically expedient (MacHugh et al. 1997). Further research will

clarify the movement of sheep and goat to China, chicken to India and the movement of

buffalo among others. However, starchy crops were clearly central to food globalization,

and are well attested. Moreover, the movements were not to regions devoid of an

indigenous starch-based agriculture, but added to that subsistence strategy. This raises the

question of why starchy crops were moved to regions in which starch was already

available. What was so interesting about a new source of carbohydrates?

Why move starch?

We can first approach the above question by addressing it to the later Columbian

Exchange, where rich historic commentary provides some direct evidence of a series of

potential drivers of food globalization. These relate in turn to ecological opportunism,

economic relations and cultural identity.

References: a: Barton et al. 2009; Hunt et al. 2008; Jones 2004; Liu et al. 2009; Lu et al. 2009; b: Hunt andJones2008;WeberandFuller 2008; c: Lisitsyna1984;Marinval 1992;Wasylikowaet al. 1991;d: Janik2000;e: Knorzer 2000; f: Crawford 1983; D’Andrea et al. 1999; Fu and Jin 2010; g: Bakels and Jacomet 2003; h:Crawfordetal. 2007;Fuller andQin2009;Fuller et al. 2010;KealhoferandPiperno1994;Tewari etal. 2008;

Zhao 2010; i: Colledge et al. 2005; Costantini 1984; Harris 2010; Miller 1999; j: Fuller 2002; k: Crawfordet al. 2005; Flad et al. 2010; Zhao 2009; l: Popova and Marinova 2000; m; Fuller 2002; Fuller et al. 2007;Sarswat and Pokharia 2003; Webber 1991; Weber 1998; n: Kimber 2000; Museum of Zhengzhou 1979.

Figure 1The earliest archaeobotanical recordsof selecteddomesticated crops in three regions ofEurasia:W(western region: Europe, theEasternMediterranean andAsiawest of theCaspian Sea); S (southern region:

India, Pakistan and Nepal); E (eastern region: China, Japan and Southeast Asia).

Food globalization in prehistory 667

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Crosby (2003) alludes to a significant role for ecological opportunism, observing that the

new starchy crops introduced into sixteenth- to seventeenth- century China, including sweet

potato, maize and peanuts, significantly extended the range of soil types that could be

brought into cultivation. He noted that, for example, sweet potato prospered on rocky

coasts, arid highlands and parts of south-east China unsuitable for rice. Several of these new

starchy crops also had a particular connection with contemporary economic relations, and,

in particular, the feeding of a subordinate labour force. Ho (1959) argued that the expansion

of the above crops from the seventeenth century in China was driven by two factors. First,

the labour-intensive rice paddies reached carrying capacity in the early eighteenth century,

and farming spread to unirrigated marginal lands beyond the core rice-growing lands.

Second, a series of imperial edicts and provincial notices exhorted the northern peasants to

grow sweet potatoes on a larger scale, in order to stave off famine. These new crops of

American origin became conspicuous on mountain hillsides and on unirrigated marginal

lands among the Asian millets and sorghum (the latter of which had itself arrived in China

only four to five centuries earlier) and eventually displaced them (Warman 2003).

The provisioning of a subordinate workforce was also a key driver for the spread of

maize across Africa and of potato across Europe. From the seventeenth to eighteenth

centuries, maize became prominent as a food for miners on the African Gold Coast

(McCann 2005), while potatoes were adopted in a similar way by farm labourers on

eighteenth-century English estates within Ireland (Donnelly 2002; McNeill 1948). Both

crops could generate high yields on small, intensely tended plots; few other species could

yield enough calories to support these workforces on the minimal areas of land allocated

to them by their masters.

The spread of one of the most important components of the Columbian Exchange is more

easily accounted for by reference to cultural choice. In comparison with other species of

wheat, and with other cereals in general, bread wheat is an ecologically demanding crop. A

number of hardier, more resilient species might be thought to be more appropriate in

pioneer settlement of unfamiliar territories. Yet the Christian settlers of European colonies

across the world attached great cultural meaning to bread wheat. The daily bread (and

indeed the Communion bread) of the European settlers was as much a part of their Christian

ideology as were their devotion to ‘taming’ the landscapes of the American West and the

hard labour required to bring forth a new harvest. Certain stages of the spread of the world’s

three principal cereals, bread wheat, maize and rice, have been driven by the importance of

their cultural meanings (Jones 2007). The emergence of such meanings can be observed even

in the period since Columbus’ contact in the late fifteenth century. For many African

communities, ‘mielie’ (maize) is now securely embedded in their cultural culinary traditions,

even though maize has been in Africa since only the seventeenth century and the

predominant crop in the continent since only the nineteenth century (McCann 2005).

Food globalization in prehistory: ecological, economic and cultural drivers

The three drivers discussed above can also be considered in the context of the prehistoric

exchange. In terms of ecological opportunism, a notable feature of the earliest crops that

spread across Eurasia is the brevity of their growth cycle and ripening period. Indeed, the


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order in which their range expanded relates inversely to the length of their growth cycle.

The fast-maturing broomcorn millet was the first crop to spread across Eurasia, followed

by buckwheat, foxtail millet and ultimately the relatively slow-maturing bread wheat. We

can infer that the most opportune crops were those that could produce high yield under

short-period growing seasons. On the one hand, this would permit optimal use of

landscapes experiencing long winters and/or dry summers. On the other hand, it would

allow crops to be inserted into multiple cropping systems in intensely farmed landscapes.

Both archaeological and textual evidence attests to intensely farmed landscapes in various

parts of Eurasia including Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and China. A detailed account of

farming systems from the third millennium BC in Southern Mesopotamia can be assembled

from a rich corpus of cuneiform clay tablets, which depict an estate-based agriculture within

bounded rectangular fields, deeply cultivated by ox-pulled winged ploughs, cleared of weeds,

irrigated and sown with single crops (Hunt 1988; LaPlaca and Powell 1990; Powell 1984).

There are also references on the tablets to se nim (early grain) and se sig (late grain). More

detail is added by evidence from second-millennium BC texts of an early harvest with

autumn-sown barley and a later harvest with spring-sown millet and oilseeds (quite possibly

sesame: Waetzoldt 1985) In other words, exogenous short-season crops like millet and

sesame were playing a significant role in an intensive multi-cropping system.

The archaeobotany of NorthWest India and Pakistan also provides some evidence of early

non-indigenous crop combinations. The highly seasonal landscapes of this region experience

both a winter rainfall and a summer monsoon. During the fourth and third millennia BC,

communities moved from local optimization to a single season, to multiple cropping

exploiting both seasons from the same settlement base. From the second millennium BC the

crop repertoire was supplemented by taxa arriving from East Asia and Africa. The precise

sequence is contested on the basis of contested early identification and chronologies.

However, by at least the early second millennium BC, multiple cropping combined cereals

from Southwest Asia, Africa, North and South China (Fuller and Qin 2009).

In East Asia, the first textual evidence of multiple cropping comes from oracle bone script

from Anyang, dated to between the fourteenth and eleventh centuries BC. Characters are

found for five crops: broomcorn and foxtail millet, rice, wheat/barley (a single character) and

soybean. Ho (1975) points out that the character for ‘wheat’ (or barley) also means ‘coming’

in both classical and modern Chinese. This may be indicative of a residual knowledge of the

wheat/barley ‘coming’ from remote places. Some scholars (Zhao and Chang 1999; Zheng

2005) argue that the oracle bone script contains evidence of autumn-sown wheat and barley

and spring-sown millets and rice. While future research may clarify the relationship between

multiple cropping and the growth of the early Chinese states, Xia and Shang, the perception

of the ‘five grains’ (those listed above) has become profoundly culturally embedded within

ancient political concepts, for example, the state ownership of land.

This brings us to the second driver, economic relations. Both the texts and the

landscapes discussed above are consistent with the existence of ranked societies and

subordinate workforces. The Mesopotamian third millennium BC cuneiform texts refer to

Palace authorities, and their management of crop production, and the circulation of crops

as exchangeable commodities (Postgate 1984). We can thus speculate that some dynamic

equivalent to that driving the expansion of African maize and European potato was

similarly significant in the earlier exchange.


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Turning to the third category of driver, cultural choice, we can start by commenting on

the absence of evidence for movement of a whole material culture package, of which crops

are a part. Indeed, as indicated at the outset, the starchy food globalization appears to

have preceded the East-West material cultural connections that Sherratt (2006) explored in

relation to his trans-European exchange, transcending the existing material culture

boundaries. However, we can note the ritual placement of certain endogenous crops in

burial contexts (cf. Frachetti et al. 2010) and that cultural choice may be evident in the

context of a recipient, rather than a migrating culture. The wheat and barley that arrived

in third-millennium BC Eastern Asia, and indeed that has persisted in East Asian cuisine,

are naked forms. During the same period, Europe and West Asia were growing both

naked and hulled forms, with the latter predominant. This clear preference for naked

grains in the East could well reflect the strong cultural choice of the recipient culture. This

could be considered in the context of an East Asian culinary tradition involving

wholegrain that Fuller and Rowlands (2009) argue has deep chronological roots.

In summary, a consideration of the better-attested Columbian Exchange draws our

attention to three types of driver, ecological, economic and cultural. Each of these

categories has some relevance to evidence from the earlier prehistoric exchange, but each is

manifest in a distinct way.

Food globalization in prehistory: interpreting the sequence.

In summary, we propose the following sequence from the direct evidence of crops:

1. An episode from the sixth to the fourth millennium BC, when particular short

season crops become dispersed widely across Eurasia. From current evidence, this

dispersal appears to happen in inverse relationship to the length of the growing

season: first broomcorn millet, then buckwheat and then foxtail millet. We suggest

that the range expansions of these crops may be driven by risk-minimizing

subsistence strategies within Asian landscapes variously constrained by long

winters and scarcity of water. There are two salient points to make about the

archaeological landscape within which those observations may be placed: first, for

much of the region in question there is currently a lack of material cultural evidence

to which such a movement could be attached; second, in that same region, there is

currently a dearth of radiocarbon dates with which to identify materially poor sites

of an appropriate period.

2. An episode during the third millennium BC when longer-season, ecologically more

demanding crops became widespread across Eurasia. Cultural prescription and

culinary preference are evident in both the archaeological context and the

taxonomy of the early finds in Central and East Asia. The degree to which the

staggered cropping possibilities of the crop combinations attested during the second

and first millennia BC in a number of regions were actually realized during the third

millennium is open to debate and further enquiry.

3. An episode during the second millennium BC when staggered cropping of novel

crop combinations is clearly attested in different parts of the Old World.


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As Sherratt (2006) suggested, there are a number of resonances between his earlier Trans-

Eurasian Exchange and the later Columbian Exchange, particularly in relation to their

relationships with stratified, expansive societies, metal technology, the horse and the

generation of crop surpluses. However, the above sequence would imply some key

differences. Most notable among these is the tempo of change; the earlier exchange would

have been much more gradual, and for millennia would have involved, not expansive

stratified societies, but communities so materially poor that their imprint has yet to be

identified, but communities that nonetheless laid a network of interconnections that could

subsequently be followed by materially more visible settlers.

Further evidence, from a range of bio-archaeological and genetic sources, will elucidate

both the chronology, and the evolutionary ecology, of this earlier, slower episode of crop

exchange. Its ultimate consequence – the potential for multi-cropping – is clearly well

suited to the surplus production required to support elites and their craft specialists. Such

elites are visible in north Eurasia in the elaborate metalwork traditions that link

prestigious funerary sites across Eurasia, which allowed Sherratt to observe the material

manifestation of globalization. What the crop evidence reveals is the long prelude to that

material manifestation, a prelude in which materially poor producers of subsistence crops

in many different regions played a definitive role.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the European Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, the

McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and Darwin College, Cambridge, for

ongoing support of the underlying research, to the Wellcome Trust and the Natural

Environment Research Council for earlier grants contributing to the research, and to

Professor Nicholas Postgate for his advice and guidance on ancient texts.

Martin Jones

University of Cambridge

[email protected]

Harriet Hunt, Emma Lightfoot, Diane Lister,

Xinyi Liu and Giedre Motuzaite-Matuzeviciute

University of Cambridge

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Martin Jones, DPhil Oxon, has been George Pitt Rivers Professor of Archaeological

Science at the University of Cambridge since 1990.

Harriet Hunt, PhD Cantab, is a post-doctoral researcher in archaeogenetics, currently

within the Food Globalisation in Prehistory Project (ERC funded), previously within the

East-West Millet Project (funded by the Wellcome and Leverhulme Trusts).

Emma Lightfoot, PhD Cantab, is a post-doctoral researcher in stable isotope analysis,

currently Adrian Research Fellow, Darwin College, University of Cambridge, and within

the Food Globalisation in Prehistory Project.

Diane Lister, PhD Cantab, is a post-doctoral researcher in archaeogenetics, currently

within the Food Globalisation in Prehistory Project (ERC funded), previously within the

Domestication of Europe Project (NERC funded).

Xinyi Liu, PhD Cantab, is a post-doctoral researcher in archaeobotany, currently within

the Food Globalisation in Prehistory Project (ERC funded).

Giedre Motuzeite-Matuzeviciute, PhD Cantab, is a post-doctoral researcher in archae-

obotany, currently within the Pioneers of Pan-Asian Contact Project (Leverhulme funded)

and within the Food Globalisation in Prehistory Project.


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food globalization in prehistory

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