The Origins of Agriculture in the Near East

Previous articleNext article FreeThe Origins of Agriculture in the Near EastMelinda A. ZederMelinda A. ZederPDFPDF PLUSAbstractFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreAbstractThe emerging picture of plant and animal domestication and agricultural origins in the Near East is dramatically different from that drawn 16 years ago in a landmark article by Bar-Yosef and Meadow. While in 1995 there appeared to have been at least a 1,500-year gap between plant and animal domestication, it now seems that both occurred at roughly the same time, with initial management of morphologically wild future plant and animal domesticates reaching back to at least 11,500 cal BP, if not earlier. A focus on the southern Levant as the core area for crop domestication and diffusion has been replaced by a more pluralistic view that sees domestication of various crops and livestock occurring, sometimes multiple times in the same species, across the entire region. Morphological change can no longer be held to be a leading-edge indicator of domestication. Instead, it appears that a long period of increasingly intensive human management preceded the manifestation of archaeologically detectable morphological change in managed crops and livestock. Agriculture in the Near East arose in the context of broad-based systematic human efforts at modifying local environments and biotic communities to encourage plant and animal resources of economic interest. This process took place across the entire Fertile Crescent during a period of dramatic post-Pleistocene climate and environmental change with considerable regional variation in the scope and intensity of these activities as well as in the range of resources being manipulated.IntroductionEighteen years ago, a week-long seminar was held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, that, much like the Wenner-Gren Mérida conference featured in this special issue of Current Anthropology, focused on the context, timing, and possible causes of the emergence of agriculture in different world areas. Sponsored by the School of American Research, this seminar resulted in the publication of an influential edited volume, Last Hunters, First Farmers: New Perspectives on the Prehistoric Transition to Agriculture (Price and Gebauer 1995), a comprehensive global overview of agricultural origins. The contribution by Ofer Bar-Yosef and Richard Meadow, in particular, provided a richly detailed account of the transition from foraging to farming in the Near East (Bar-Yosef and Meadow 1995). The scope and breadth of the Bar-Yosef and Meadow article likely explains why it has been the most authoritative and most widely cited synthesis of Near Eastern agricultural origins. This work, then, serves as an ideal benchmark against which to measure advances in our understanding of Near Eastern plant and animal domestication and agricultural emergence in the years between the Santa Fe and Mérida conferences.Near Eastern Agricultural Origins: 1995While comprehensive in its geographic scope, Bar-Yosef and Meadow (1995) had a special emphasis on the Levant, especially on the southern Levant (figs. 1, 2). Decades of survey and excavation, especially in the parts of the Levant that fell within the borders of modern Israel, had yielded a remarkably detailed and well-controlled archaeological record of the transition from foraging to farming in this part of the Near East. Similar coverage had not yet been accomplished in other parts of the Fertile Crescent. When the Bar-Yosef and Meadow article was published, documenting domestication in plants and animals required the detection of morphological modifications caused by domestication. In cereals, the marker of choice was the development of a tough rachis, a change in the plant's dispersal mechanism thought to arise when humans sowed harvested cereal grains. In pulses, the primary domestication marker was an increase in seed size, a response to seedbed pressures that allowed sown seeds to germinate more quickly and shade out competing seedlings. In animals, archaeozoologists relied primarily on the demonstration of overall body-size reduction, held to be a rapid response to herd management.Figure 1. Distribution of main Late Epipaleolithic and Neolithic sites in the Near East. 1, Ohalo II; 2, Ein Gev IV; 3, Neve David; 4, Kharaheh IV; 5, Beidha; 6, Hayonim; 7, Wadi al-Hammeh 27; 8, Ain Mallaha; 9, Jericho; 10, Iraq ed Dubb; 11, Hatoula; 12, Dhra; 13, Netiv Hagdud; 14, Gigal I; 15, Aswad; 16, Ghoraife; 17, Wadi el-Jilat 7; 18, Yiftah'el; 19, Ain Ghazal; 20, Basta; 21, Ramad; 22, Khirbet Hammam; 23, Abu Hureyra; 24, Mureybit; 25, Dja'de; 26, Jerf el Ahmar; 27, Kosak Shamali; 28, Halula; 29, Qaramel; 30, Tel el-Kerkh; 31, Ras Shamra; 32, Bouqras; 33, Hallan Çemi; 34, Demirköy; 35, Körtik; 36, Göbekli Tepe; 37, Nevali Çori; 38, Çayönü; 39, Cafer Höyük; 40, Grittle; 41, Palegawra; 42, Shanidar cave; 43, Zawi Chemi Shanidar; 44, Qermez Dere; 45, Nemrik; 46, M'lefaat; 47, Asiab; 48, Ganj Dareh; 49, Ali Kosh; 50, Jarmo; 51, Guran; 52, Sarab; 53, Pinarbassi A; 54, Aşikli Höyük; 55, Suberde; 56, Can Hasan III; 57, Çatal Höyük; 58, Erbaba; 59, Aetokremnos; 60, Mylouthikia; 61, Shillourokambos.View Large ImageDownload PowerPointFigure 2. Time line of Near Eastern sites, Levantine chronology, and climatic conditions compiled using information from Aurenche et al. (2001); Bar-Yosef and Meadow (1995); Byrd (2005); Kuijt and Goring-Morris (2002); Nesbitt (2002); and Willcox (2005). PPNA, PPNB= Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and B, respectively.View Large ImageDownload PowerPointBased on these criteria, crop domestication was thought to have originated in the southern Levant during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) period, around 11,500–11,000 cal BP (fig. 2). Animal domestication seemed to have been a delayed development, with different livestock species brought under domestication in different parts of the region (from the Levant to the Zagros), beginning with goats sometime during the Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB), around 10,000 cal BP, followed by sheep, with cattle and pigs domesticated later still. While livestock and some crop plants may have been domesticated in other parts of the Fertile Crescent, the southern Levant was thought to be the home of initial cultivation from which domesticates and domestic technology spread quickly into the rest of the Fertile Crescent through an "uneven series of movements affecting different areas at different times" (Bar-Yosef and Meadow 1995:41). The coalescence of disparate elements of this subsistence system into an agricultural economy was thought to have occurred over a 2,000-year period, from about 10,000 to 8000 cal BP, during which time it gradually became the dominant subsistence economy throughout the region.Near Eastern Agricultural Origins: 2010In the 16 years since publication of Bar-Yosef and Meadow (1995), there has been an exponential increase in information on this transition not only from the southern Levant but also from other parts of the Fertile Crescent that had not been as thoroughly explored in 1995. A number of new archaeobiological approaches to documenting domestication have been developed that are providing powerful new insights into the initial phases of domestication in both plants and animals. Also contributing to the emerging picture of Near Eastern agricultural origins are genetic analyses that have identified the progenitors of Near Eastern domestic crops and livestock species and defined the likely geographic regions of their domestication. More widespread use of small-sample accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating has made it possible to directly and precisely date the remains of domestic plants and animals, greatly enhancing the temporal control of our understanding of this transition. The result is a vastly changed picture of the origins of agriculture in the Near East.New Archaeological Insights into Plant DomesticationCerealsWhen Bar-Yosef and Meadow (1995) was written, the presence of a few large domestic grains of einkorn (Triticum monococcum cf. monococcum) and rye (Secale cf. cereale) from Epipaleolithic levels at Abu Hureyra I had raised the possibility that initial cereal domestication occurred in the northern Levant during the Younger Dryas climatic downturn (Hillman, Colledge, and Harris 1989). Subsequent AMS dating of these grains found that, as suspected, most were intrusive from Middle PPNB levels. However, three grains of domestic-morphotype rye were found to date to between 13,000 and 12,000 cal BP, and on the basis of this early date, Hillman argued that these grains represented the earliest morphologically altered domestic cereals in the Near East (Hillman 2000; but see Nesbitt 2002:118–119). Hillman acknowledged that grains consistent in size with domestic varieties are known to occur in low numbers in wild cereals but argued that the probability of finding these rare mutant forms within archaeological assemblages of collected wild rye was essentially zero (Hillman 2000:382). If rye was domesticated at this early date, however, it does not seem to have made much of a mark on Near Eastern subsistence economies. With the onset of warmer and wetter climatic conditions in the Early Holocene, the utilization of this cool-climate cereal first declined and then ceased altogether in the Middle Euphrates (Willcox, Fornite, and Herveux 2008). Domesticated rye is not seen again for another 2,000 years, when it is found in low numbers in central Anatolia at Can Hasan III (ca. 9400 cal BP; Hillman 1978). Never a prominent component of Near Eastern cereal crops, modern domestic rye traces its heritage to European wild rye (Weiss, Kislev, and Hartmann 2006).Arguments advanced in 1995 for the appearance of morphologically altered domestic barley and emmer during the PPNA in the southern Levant have been largely overturned in the intervening years (Weiss and Zohary 2011). When Bar-Yosef and Meadow (1995) went to press, the handful of tough-rachis barley Hordeum vulgare ssp. distictum found among the thousands of brittle-rachis wild barley grains H. vulgare ssp. spontaneum recovered at Gigal and Netiv Hagdud in the southern Levant seemed likely candidates for the earliest domesticated cereal crop. Although this evidence was questioned at the time by Kislev (1989, 1992), who maintained that the low proportion of tough-rachis barley in the Netiv Hagdud assemblage was consistent with the representation of this morphotype in wild stands, others seemed more comfortable with the attribution of these cereal remains as domestic (i.e., Bar-Yosef and Meadow 1995:66–67; Hillman and Davies 1992; Zohary 1992). There is now a more general consensus that tough-rachis grains must constitute at least 10% of a cereal assemblage before it can be considered domestic (Tanno and Willcox 2006a; Weiss, Kislev, and Hartmann 2006). This means that the barley recovered from these early sites (where tough-rachis varieties constitute about 4% of the total barley recovered) more likely represent intensively collected and possibly cultivated morphologically wild cereals (Kislev 1997; Weiss, Kislev, and Hartmann 2006). The application of AMS dating to carbonized material recovered from new excavations at Tell Aswad has moved up the dates of the more securely identified domesticated emmer and barley from this site. Originally thought to date to the PPNA (ca. 11,500 cal BP), the levels that yielded these domestic cereals are now known to date to the end of the Early and beginning of the Middle PPNB (ca. 10,300–10,000 cal BP; Stordeur 2003; Willcox 2005).Nesbitt's comprehensive evaluation of the evidence for the appearance of domesticated cereals in the Near East concludes that the evidence for morphologically altered cereal domesticates before about 10,500 cal BP is either too poorly documented or too poorly dated to be accepted as marking the initial threshold of cereal domestication (Nesbitt 2002). The earliest securely identified and dated domestic emmer (Triticum turgidum ssp. dicoccum) and einkorn (T. monococcum ssp. monococcum) grains and chaff, according to Nesbitt, come from sites in the Upper Euphrates valley (Nevali Çori, Cafer Höyük, and possibly Çayönü) that date to the Early PPNB, at about 10,500–10,200 cal BP. Nesbitt contends that securely identified and dated domestic barley is not seen until the Middle PPNB, when it is found throughout the Fertile Crescent and Anatolian Plateau.Additional evidence for the late or at least delayed appearance of morphologically domestic cereals in the Near East is provided by Tanno and Willcox (2006a), who document the gradual increase in the proportion of tough-rachis domestic morphotypes among wheat and barley recovered from sites in the Middle and Upper Euphrates valley. Domestic morphotypes constitute only 10% of the single-grained einkorn recovered from Nevali Çori (ca. 10,200 cal BP), barely meeting the threshold for demonstrating the presence of domestic cereals. Only 35% of the barley recovered from somewhat later levels at Aswad (10,200–9500 cal BP) and a little over 50% of the barley recovered from Ramad (9500–8500 cal BP) are nonshattering varieties. Even as late as 7500 cal BP, domestic morphotypes constitute only around 60% of the two-grained einkorn recovered from Kosak Shamali, a variety that Willcox postulates represents a second domestication of diploid wheats (Willcox 2005:537).PulsesAlthough substantial quantities of lentils had been recovered from PPNA sites in both the southern and the northern Levant by 1995, the absence of clear morphological markers of domestication (i.e., larger seed sizes) precluded Bar-Yosef and Meadow from drawing any conclusions about their domestic status. However, Weiss, Kislev, and Hartmann (2006; also Weiss and Zohary 2011) and Tanno and Willcox (2006b; also Willcox, Buxó, and Herveux 2009; Willcox, Fornite, and Herveux 2008) have subsequently concluded that the hundreds of lentils found in storage bins at Netiv Hagdud and Jerf el Ahmar are unlikely to represent wild, unmanaged plants. Wild lentils, they argue, are not a common component of Near Eastern plant communities, and the yield of seeds per plant, at about 10–20, is very low. Moreover, wild lentils have an exceptionally high rate of seed dormancy; only about 10% of wild lentil seeds germinate after sowing. Thus, the quantity of lentils recovered from these of PPNA sites suggests that lentils were likely being transplanted from wild patches, aggregated in new environments, and tended by humans. Weiss, Kislev, and Hartmann (2006) also argue that these early lentils had undergone a lowering in the rate of seed dormancy and an increase in the number of seeds per plant, initial steps toward domestication that would not be archaeologically detectable.Similarly, Tanno and Willcox (2006b) maintain that the chickpeas (Cicer sp.) recovered from Tel el-Kerkh (ca. 10,200 cal BP) in northwestern Syria represent an early stage in the cultivation of this well-known Near Eastern crop plant. While these are not definitively domestic morphotypes, the high degree of morphological variability of the chickpeas from this site, together with the rarity and sparseness of wild chickpea stands (which do not grow in the region today), is again suggestive of intentional transplanting and cultivation. A similar case is made for the faba beans (Vicia faba) recovered from this site (Tanno and Willcox 2006b). Although not as large as modern faba beans, they are very similar to the faba beans recovered in large numbers from the Late PPNB (ca. 8800 cal BP) at Yiftah'el (Garfinkel, Kislev, and Zohary 1988), which are almost certainly cultivated varieties. In fact, the large-seeded modern variety of faba bean is not seen in the Near East until about AD 1000 (Tanno and Willcox 2006b).FigsRecently, Kislev, Hartmann, and Bar-Yosef (2006a) have argued that the earliest morphologically altered plant domesticate in the Near East was neither a cereal nor a pulse but a tree crop. The presence of parthenocarpic figs at the PPNA site of Gigal in the southern Levant (ca. 11,400–11,200 cal BP) has been interpreted as a clear indication of human selection for this mutant infertile fig variety that remains on the tree longer and develops sweeter, softer fruit. Other researchers have noted, however, that parthenocarpy is known among wild female fig trees (Denham 2007; Lev-Yadun et al. 2006) and therefore, as with the presence of tough-rachis varieties or larger cereal grains in low quantities, their occurrence in an archaeobotanical assemblage cannot be considered definitive proof of domestication. Kislev, Hartmann, and Bar-Yosef (2006b) have responded that if, as their critics contend, these figs represent the selective harvest of mutant figs from wild fig trees, at least some seeded varieties would be expected to have been collected along with these rare, naturally occurring parthenocarpic figs. Instead, all of the nine carbonized fruits and 313 single druplets recovered from Gigal represent this infertile variety. Domestication of this shrubby pioneer plant, they maintain, could be accomplished by replanting cut branches of trees that naturally produce these sweeter fruits. Such an activity underscores the degree to which people were likely modifying local environments and biotic communities as well as their willingness to invest in nurturing resources, such as slowly maturing trees, with delayed rewards.Plant managementThere is, in fact, increasing evidence that humans were actively modifying local ecosystems and manipulating biotic communities to increase the availability of certain economically important plant resources for hundreds of years before the manifestation of morphological indicators of plant domestication (Weiss, Kislev, and Hartmann 2006; Willcox, Buxó, and Herveux 2009; Willcox, Fornite, and Herveux 2008). First, the presence of distinctive complexes of weedy species of under human cultivation suggests that humans were actively and wild stands of einkorn and rye at both Abu Hureyra and during the Late Epipaleolithic (ca. cal BP; Hillman in this at (ca. 11,500 cal BP) and Jerf el Ahmar (ca. cal BP) an of plant cultivation in the Middle Euphrates during the PPNA period (Willcox, Fornite, and Herveux 2008). Willcox, Fornite, and Herveux also Willcox, Buxó, and Herveux also the increase in the quantity of wild einkorn in Early assemblages from the Middle Euphrates sites as evidence of human management of this plant. Wild einkorn monococcum ssp. is not well to the of the Middle and it would not have responded well to the of the Early the region is too and for wild which can be found only on of Jerf el The dramatic increase in the representation of wild einkorn in Middle Euphrates assemblages over the of the PPNA to Early PPNB could these argue, only if people were actively plants transplanted from local and to tended plants (Willcox, Fornite, and Herveux A increase in the and breadth of barley and einkorn grains from these sites a increase in is interpreted as a response to cultivation (Willcox The in plants of the Euphrates and the of and increase in morphologically wild of crops such as lentils, and faba beans have also been to argue that humans were modifying local plant communities and morphologically wild but cultivated cereals and (Willcox, Buxó, and Herveux 2009; Willcox, Fornite, and Herveux 2008). In to the quantities of lentils recovered from PPNA sites such as Netiv Hagdud and the large number of morphologically wild barley and wild recovered from these sites grains of wild barley and of wild from a single at suggests that people in the southern Levant were also plants of economic (Weiss, Kislev, and Hartmann of plant assemblages from the northern Fertile Crescent by Nesbitt, and (2006) that people in the more parts of the Fertile Crescent were also intensively a variety of plant resources, with considerable regional variation in the plant species Late Epipaleolithic of Hallan for a range of plant species with a special focus on plants such as as well as large-seeded to a sp.) and A similar assemblage was found at a site after Hallan a number of as yet and some wild barley vulgare cf. were also The plant assemblages from roughly sites in environments of northern Iraq and are by large-seeded followed by with and wild cereals and also of this back at least to the Late (ca. cal BP), as by the remarkably plant assemblage recovered from the Levantine site of Ohalo which a of and and et al. Weiss et al. There is some indication that the intensive of this of and large-seeded cereals, and other plant resources may as back as the Middle et al. 2003; Kislev, and Bar-Yosef is an over the of this long period of increasingly utilization of plant resources, humans to actively local ecosystems and biotic communities to encourage the availability of economically important plants. it is clear that by at least 11,500 years ago, humans had brought a number of plant species under cultivation and that for the manifestation of certain morphological seen in these plants be considered domesticated delayed of morphological in managed plants cal BP in cereals and later in may be to the of new wild plants when cultivated crops (Tanno and Willcox is also possible that early may not have the morphological to cereal dispersal thought to be a marker of cereal domestication. into for or cereals before they were or of from the have to the of the in cultivated cereals Kislev, and Weiss 2006; and 2006; Tanno and Willcox 2006a; Willcox and Tanno 2006). The appearance of morphological change in these crops is, then, most likely an of a change in management or of cultivated crops and not a leading-edge indicator of plants being brought under human Archaeological Insights into Animal of morphological markers as leading-edge indicators of livestock domestication is more This is especially of body-size reduction, the primary marker to document animal domestication for the of modern and archaeological assemblages from the region has that to a are the most important affecting size in both and goats Domestic on the other has no on the size of female and only a on as a in the degree of This has also that evidence of body-size in Near Eastern archaeological assemblages is as had been the result of a morphological response to human Instead, the toward animals is an of the different by in the of the in an archaeological assemblage by large and who to the of a herd by and the of until they have years of various and the harvest an archaeological assemblage by 2008). assemblages of animals primarily made up of large with of harvested managed animals by to the that body-size had consistent size between the elements of and female however, it possible to harvest for and goats that are of the harvest from the In the central the of harvest and delayed female is first within the of wild goats among the remains from the site of Ganj directly dated to cal BP The same was also in the goats from the site of Ali the of wild goats on the of and first at about cal BP. in the size and of has been over the of this site and were a response to human management that arose when humans control over and the selective for large in The of management documented in the central are however, the earliest evidence of management in the Near East. with it now seems that the of animal management back at least years before the manifestation of archaeologically detectable morphological change in managed interpreted the of the from the site of Zawi Chemi Shanidar in the northwestern as evidence of domestication in the Late Epipaleolithic (ca. cal A new of this assemblage a focused on that is, as noted, a from the for goats in and Upper levels at Shanidar 2008). this is also not consistent with the of and delayed female harvest for goats at Ganj and Ali A similar focus on has been at the roughly site of Hallan to the of Zawi Chemi and part of the same et al. this as a under conditions of intensive on local wild The of local by a that with home from This a of a local of and Although this does not the same degree of intentional control over herd found in managed it certainly an at increasing the availability of by a for the of and the of female of herd The of the remains from a somewhat later (ca. cal BP) site to the of Hallan has also been interpreted as a between management and herd management and transition from to appears to have been by about 10,500 cal BP at Nevali Çori, using and have in the and of consistent with the harvest of and et al. seem to have been the initial early focus of herd management with managed goats from at about 10,200 cal BP and of the