This is the first time an archaeobotanical analysis based on macroremains, both charred and desiccated, from Cambodia is reported. The archaeobotanical samples are rich and provide evidence of rice processing, consumption of non-indigenous pulses, and the use of economic crops. The evidence is supported by data from inscriptions, texts and historical ethnography. This study demonstrates that th...

if we go through the evolution of human society, we will come to know that plants have always played important role in human life. human settlement, quite often, shifted from one place to another in search of natural vegetation. whether man was hunter, or concentrated on animal husbandry, or even became cultivators, they needed green surrounding for their day-to-day life. the present paper tri...

BACKGROUND The study of the prehistoric origins and dispersal routes of domesticated plants is often based on the analysis of either archaeobotanical or genetic data. As more data become available, spatially explicit models of crop dispersal can be used to combine different types of evidence. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We present a model in which a crop disperses through a landscape that ...

Existing archaeobotanical and palynological records of plant use in the northern New Guinea lowlands are reviewed in light of recent work at Kuk and theoretical refocusing on plant use practice. A practice-based approach is supported as the most useful way of investigating the highly problematical area of tropical plant food production. The existing direct record of past plant use in lowland Ne...

The origins of agriculture involved pathways of domestication in which human behaviours and plant genetic adaptations were entangled. These changes resulted in consequences that were unintended at the start of the process. This paper highlights some of the key innovations in human behaviours, such as soil preparation, harvesting and threshing, and how these were coupled with genetic ‘innovation...

Modern plant use and garbage disposal practices in an Iranian village were observed in order to provide a framework for the interpretation of plant remains from ancient Malyan, a third millennium B.C. urban center in southern Iran. The ethnoarchaeological model suggested that many carbonized seeds originate in dung cake fuel. By applying this proposition to the archaeobotanical material from Ma...

Ancient DNA (aDNA) recovered from archaeobotanical remains can provide key insights into many prominent archaeological research questions, including processes of domestication, past subsistence strategies, and human interactions with the environment. However, it is often difficult to isolate aDNA from ancient plant materials, and furthermore, such DNA extracts frequently contain inhibitory subs...

Archaeobotanical studies are currently being carried out on all the plant remains retrieved from the high alpine site where the Iceman ‘‘Ötzi’’ was found (3,210 m a.s.l.). Preliminary results already show a great diversity of species (121 taxa) mainly originating from lower regions, which must have been transported to the Tisenjoch site by a number of vectors. Spatial modelling has been carried...

The Austronesian settlement of the remote island of Madagascar remains one of the great puzzles of Indo-Pacific prehistory. Although linguistic, ethnographic, and genetic evidence points clearly to a colonization of Madagascar by Austronesian language-speaking people from Island Southeast Asia, decades of archaeological research have failed to locate evidence for a Southeast Asian signature in ...