Ecological-cultural inheritance in the wetlands: the non-linear transition to plant food production in the southern Levant

Abstract

AbstractThe paper discusses a multi-proxy archaeobotanical dataset from the published macrobotanical and microbotanical research of 19 Epipalaeolithic sites over a period of 13.5 ka (ca. 25-11.5 ka cal bp) in the southern Levant. The archaeobotanical record includes over 200 phytolith samples extracted from sediments of 11 sites, macrobotanical evidence from seeds, plant tissues and wood charcoal from 11 sites and other microbotanical data from starches and starch spherulites from three sites. Phytolith assemblages show that Epipalaeolithic hunter-gatherers relied on wetland plant resources, and the macrobotanical evidence demonstrates the cultural importance of wetland resources to Late Epipalaeolithic foodways. The paper assesses the archaeobotanical data, using niche construction theory (NCT) to argue that human impacts in the wetlands over generations increased wetland productivity and created long-lasting ecological and cultural inheritances that allowed for the evolution and proliferation of a wetland-based system of wild plant food production. This paper proposes the idea that wetlands provided Epipalaeolithic people with a ‘domestication laboratory’ that allowed them to interact and modify their environment and also to experiment and gain new knowledge to build the long-lasting ecological-cultural inheritances necessary for the transition to plant food production. Importantly, the ecological-cultural inheritance of wild plant food production in the wetlands enabled the non-linear transition to cereal-based wild plant food production and domestication that took place in the southern Levant.