Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Cultivation Strategies in Pastoral Landscapes

Washington University, Saint Louis MO

Investigators

Abstract

The goal of this dissertation project is to research labor investment in plant cultivation in mountainous regions which were optimal for mobile pastoralism. The diachronic nature of archaeology provides an increasingly important lens into the development, maintenance, and repercussions of human populations’ survival strategies. A better understanding of food security at the community level is a crucial research avenue, particularly in light of the world’s current challenges facing global warming, increasingly frequent weather events, and food/water insecurity. Communities in the study region maintained networks of interactions. This region enabled a globalization event connecting peoples and spreading ideas, technologies, and domesticated animals and plants. There has been considerable momentum in recent years to uncover the management of animals within these prehistoric, multi-resource, agropastoral communities. However, the role of plant cultivation within these systems is less studied. This project will examine how pastoralists of varying mobility negotiated their labor and time to grow crops that facilitated the spread of these plant domesticates. Additionally, this project will aid in engendering beneficial partnerships between United States scholars and multiple other nations and provide learning opportunities for students to acquire archaeobotanical and archaeological skills. This research focuses on the historically less-studied agricultural practices conducted by mobile pastoral groups. During the earliest introduction of domesticated plants did communities adopt a labor-intensive cultivation strategy or did they modify prexisting strategies (the source of the domesticated plants) to fit a more extensive agropastoral lifestyle characteristic of mountainous mobile pastoralism? To answer this question, the project utilizes a systematic analysis of weed taxa from nine sites coupled with stable carbon and nitrogen isotope measurements of charred cereal grains (wheat and barley). Weed taxa and crop stable isotopes are complimentary lines of evidence to understand labor investment in plant cultivation by acting as proxies for watering, manuring, and weeding. The research will address not only locally specific questions regarding subsistence choice, but also global themes about the variability of agropastoral choices within challenging environments. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.