All posts by Valentina Caracuta

the 1st article of the S.I. “Histories of Crops, between Niche Construction, Domestication and Diversification” is available for download.

We are pleased to announce that Jennifer Bates’ article

“Is Domestication Speciation? The Implications of a Messy Domestication Model in the Holocene“

has been published in Agronomy as part of the Special Issue Histories of Crops, between Niche Construction, Domestication and Diversification and is available online:

Abstract: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/11/4/784
PDF Version: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/11/4/784/pdf
Special Issue: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/agronomy/special_issues/Crops_Domestication
the deadline for submitting papers is  June 15th 2021

Agonomy – Special Issue “Histories of Crops, between Niche Construction, Domestication and Diversification”

 

Dear Colleagues,

Over the last twelve thousand years, more than two thousand plant species have been domesticated worldwide. Domestication was driven by a multitude of environmental, climatic, and cultural factors, which ultimately led plants to thrive in human-made niches while losing the ability to propagate in natural settings. The study of major crops thus far has enabled the identification of 11 different regions where plants were independently domesticated, but studies on the domestication process of most crops are unconcluded and uncertainties persist on their original area of distribution and their patterns of diversification. The increasing corpus of agronomic, genomic, archaeobotanical, and ethnographic data can provide crucial information on these issues, and overall advance our understanding of domestication processes on a global scale.

With this Special Issue of Agronomy, we seek integrative studies that shed light on the origin and diversification of understudied crops, as well as reviews that offer original perspectives on the domestication of major crops. Furthermore, we encourage contributions that investigate the cultural, social, and linguistic background of domestication to create a comprehensive history of the origin and early development of agriculture.

Dr. Valentina Caracuta
Prof. Dr. Roberto Papa
Prof. Dr. Ferran Antolin
Guest Editors

Deadline for submission 15th June 2021. 

Link

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/agronomy/special_issues/Crops_Domestication

 

13th Janury 2020. Seminar ‘The riddle of Faba bean (Vicia faba): how to study the evolutionary history of a domesticated plant when the wild progenitor is extinct.’

The seminar is part of the Departmental activities of the

Institute of  Evolution Sciences of Montpellier (ISEM).

The seminar will be held Monday 13th of January 2020 11.30h-12.30h  at the Campus  Triolet , Building 22,  room Louis Thaller

The seminar is part of the activities of the  FABA-SHAPE Project (Agreement N.792373) hosted by the ISEM, which is funded by the European Research Fund on the measure Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship.

 

25th EAA Conference_Session 60: ‘Beyond “founder crops”: new insights into understudied food plant resources’._Program

BEYOND “FOUNDER CROPS”: NEW INSIGHTS INTO  UNDERSTUDIED FOOD PLANT RESOURCES
Building: UniS
Room: A 017
Time: 14:00 – 17:30

Organisers:

Caracuta, Valentina (Institut de Science de l’Ecologie de Montpellier)

Antolin, Ferran (Integrative Prähistorische und Naturwissenschaftliche Archäologie – IPNA, University of Bern)

14:00 INTRODUCTION

14:15 RE-DEFINING THE “FOUNDER PLANTS” IN SOUTHWEST ASIA
Arranz Otaegui, Amaia (University of Copenhagen)

14:30 LOST IN THE MISTS OF TIME – FABA BEAN (VICIA FABA) AN OVERLOOKED FOUNDER CROP
Caracuta, Valentina (Institut des Science de l’Ecologie de Montpellier)

14:45 GROWING EAST ASIAN MILLETS: EXPERIMENTAL AND MORPHOLOGICAL  STUDIES ON FOXTAIL MILLET (SETARIA ITALICA) AND RELATED WEEDY TAXA
Lee, Gyoung-Ah – Vaughn, Maria – Kneisly, Angelica (University of Oregon)

15:00 OLIVE AND GRAPE IN PREHISTORIC AEGEAN: RESEATING THE RESEARCH AGENDA
Margaritis, Evi (The Cyprus Institute) – Pagnoux, Clemence (LIRA Laboratory, Department of Archaeology, University of Thessaloniki)

15:15 OIL AND FIBRE PLANTS DURING THE NEOLITHIC PERIOD IN THE NORTHWEST  MEDITERRANEAN REGION AND NORTH OF ALPS
Jesus, Ana – Antolín, Ferran (Universität Basel; Integrative Prehistory and  Archaeological Science – IPAS) – Bouby, Laurent (University of Montpellier)

15:30 OAT DOMESTICATION: ARCHAEOBOTANICAL EVIDENCE FROM PREHISTORIC  EUROPE
McClatchie, Meriel (University College Dublin) – Murphy, Charlene – Fuller, Dorian (University College London)

15:45 DISCUSSION SLOT

16:30 CRAB APPLE IN PREHISTORIC EUROPE: FROM THE NEOLITHIC “GOLDEN AGE”  UNTIL THE ARRIVAL OF THE DOMESTICATED FORM
Antolin, Ferran (Integrative Prehistory and Archaeological Science) – Brinkkemper, Otto (Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands) – Kirleis, Wiebke (Kiel University) – Pelling, Ruth (Historic England)

16:45 INTRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF CULTIVATED AND WILD PLANTS IN EUROPE FROM 8000 – 800 BCE BASED ON LINGUISTICS AND ARCHAEOBOTANY
van Amerongen, Yvonne (Leiden University Centre for Linguistics; Archaeological Research Leiden) – Kroonen, Guus (Leiden University Centre for Linguistics; Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen)

17:00 DISCUSSION SLOT

25th European Archaeological Association (EAA) Conference_Session 60

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Session 60: ‘Beyond “founder crops”: new insights into understudied food plant resources’.

The beginning of agriculture is seen as the major transition in the human past, a changeover that strengthened sedentary lifestyle, drastically reduced the risk of famine and the dependence on the environmental conditions, and ultimately, allowed the human population to prosper.

Archaeological and genetic discoveries have shed light on the most relevant processes that accompanied the domestication of the so‐called “founder crops” (emmer, einkorn, barley, lentil, pea, chickpea, bitter vetch and flax). Nevertheless, the role of minor crops and weedy plants, as well as wild plants that could have been cultivated but eventually not domesticated, among hunter‐gatherers and early farmers is relatively understudied. With the increasing corpus of archaeobotanical data, together with the appearance of new and more powerful genomic, biometric and radiocarbon dating techniques, we are gaining new insights into plant cultivation and domestication that had not been possible before.

Within the framework of this session we would like to bring together researchers working on the cultivation of wild plants and the domestication of minor crops in Southwestern Asia, Northern Africa and Europe. We also encourage new archaeobotanical and paleogenomic discoveries to be presented, to track and date changes in the phenotypes and genotypes of plants that are considered marginal, but were instead crucial for the survival of ancient and modern‐primitive communities.

Papers that discuss the mechanism of exploitation of minor crops among modern traditional societies from an ethnographic perspective are considered relevant to the discussion.

The organizers

Valentina Caracuta (France)  valentina.caracuta@umontpellier.fr

Institut de Science de l’Ecologie de Montpellier, France

Ferran Antolin (Switzerland)  Ferran.Antolin@unibas.ch

IPNA/IPAS, University of Basel

Legume Laboratory- 18th IWGP Conference. http://conference.unisalento.it/ocs/index.php/iwgp2019/index/pages/view/laboratories-workshops

Problems identifying legumes in archaeological sites?

Attend the Legume Laboratory at the

18th International WorkGroup of Palaeoethnobotany  Conference

experts will discuss the most advanced techniques to study legumes collected from archaeological sites.

The scope of the laboratory is to extend the knowledge about the identification of legumes, with theoretical and practical approaches for the study of their anatomical features.
Morphological characteristics used by archaeobotanists to identify legumes are rarely illustrated or described. The earliest attempt to provide criteria for the identification of legumes from  archaeological sites was that of Butler, in the early 2000’s, who studies pods and, later, seeds testa (Butler 2002, 2014).
Among the most detailed study is that carried out by Fuller and Harvey who listed the criteria for the identification of archaeological seeds of Indian native legumes (Fuller &
Harvey 2006). Around the same time, Tanno and Willcox analyzed in detail the anatomy of chickpea and faba bean seeds from a Pre-Pottery Neolithic site in northern Levant (Tanno & Willcox 2006). More recently, Caracuta and colleagues developed criteria for
the identification of wild and domesticated legumes coming from Natufian and Pre-Pottery Neolithic sites in Southern Levant (Caracuta et al. 2016, 2017).
The laboratory session at the 18th IWGP conference is meant to provide archaeobotanists criteria for the identification of legumes coming from different ecological regions.
Modern reference material will be compared to the archaeological samples to assess the effect of degradation on the anatomy of ancient specimens.

Valentina Caracuta, Yoel Melamed will lead this laboratory session

References
Butler, A. (2002). Investigations of pod characters in the Vicieae. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, 11(1-2), 127-132.
BUTLER, A. (2014). 24 Cryptic anatomical characters as evidence of early cultivation in the grain legumes (pulses). Foraging and Farming: The Evolution of Plant Exploitation, 390.
Fuller, D. Q., & Harvey, E. L. (2006). The archaeobotany of Indian pulses: identification, processing and evidence for cultivation. Environmental Archaeology, 11(2), 219-246.
Tanno, K. I., & Willcox, G. (2006). The origins of cultivation of Cicer arietinum L. and Vicia faba L.: early finds from Tell el-Kerkh, north-west Syria, late 10th millennium BP. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, 15(3), 197-204.
Caracuta, V., Weinstein-Evron, M., Kaufman, D., Yeshurun, R., Silvent, J., & Boaretto, E. (2016). 14,000-year-old seeds indicate the Levantine origin of the lost progenitor of faba bean. Scientific Reports, 6, 37399.
Caracuta, V., Vardi, J., Paz, Y., & Boaretto, E. (2017). Farming legumes in the pre-pottery Neolithic: New discoveries from the site of Ahihud (Israel). PloS ONE, 12(5), e0177859.

Talk on ‘The origin and distribution of faba bean (Vicia faba) – new insight from the past’

 

the 21st of May 2019, Dr. Valentina Caracuta will give a talk at the 3rd International Legume Society meeting -Pozdnan. https://ils3.org/program

‘The origin and distribution of faba bean (Vicia faba) – new insight from the past’

Faba bean is a staple in the diets of many societies from North Africa to China and India. Despite its agronomic and economic importance, very little can be done to improve the crop sensitiveness to pests, diseases and environmental stress. All the subspecies are domesticated and useful genetic traits, often preserved in the wild type, cannot be selected to increase the crop resistance.
This work aims to identify the original distribution of the wild progenitor of faba bean and the routes used by prehistoric farmers to spread the domesticated types across the Mediterranean. The study is based on the survey of the findings of faba bean in archaeological sites, where the seeds can be preserved for thousands of years.
The data collected show that the wild progenitor grew on Mount Carmel (Israel) about 14,000 years ago and that the earliest domesticated types were cultivated in Lower Galilee (Israel) around 10,200 years ago. From this point onward, remains of faba bean started appearing in the Middle East, then in the Mediterranean, and later, in central Europe, following the dispersal routes of the Neolithic farmers.