Dasypyrum villosum (mosquito grass) in archaeobotanical assemblages from the Balkans and east-central Europe reveals aspects of human plant- and land use

Archaeobotanists working in the Balkans and the Carpathian Basin in the 1980s documented remains resembling wild rye caryopses in the deposits from the Bronze and Iron ages, and named them “weedy rye” or “small Secale ”. It took years and more finds, including those of chaff, to identify these remains more precisely—as Dasypyrum villosum (mosquito grass). The first systematic overview of archaeobotanical records of this species in the Balkans and east-central Europe provided detailed description of the finds, emphasising the difficulty in distinguishing the grain and chaff of D. villosum from those of wheat (principally Triticum monococcum , einkorn) and Secale . Since this work, further finds of D. villosum have been discovered in this part of Europe, dating from prehistory but also later periods. The current paper combines the previous and new knowledge and examines the wider temporal, geographical, archaeobotanical and bioecological context of D. villosum . Our study confirms the earliest appearance of D. villosum from the Bronze Age and shows its continued presence through the late antique and medieval periods, mainly in the deposits containing large amounts of einkorn. We consider early finds of D. villosum as indicators of the changes in land use noted for the Bronze and Early Iron ages in our study region. These changes pertained to the advance of specialised, more extensive crop and animal husbandry, intensified metallurgy and growing urbanism, leading to modification of the environment and facilitating the expansion of D. villosum and other species associated with open, dry, disturbed habitats.