Archaeobotanical investigations of plant cultivation and husbandry practices

Description

Archaeobotanical data is used as the basis for the investigations of the subsistence economy at the Early Bronze Age settlement Küllüoba in west-central Anatolia. This work introduces new evidence from this EBA settlement located on a flat mound in the upper Sakarya Valley. For the investigation of crops and animal husbandry, evidence of the weed taxa and their ecological meaning in the archaeobotanical records are considered as the main sources of information in order to understand husbandry practices such as cropping sequences, intensity of the crop cultivation, harvesting methods and long or short-term cultivation of the fields. Examining the archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological evidence together, the author argues that small-scale intensive crop and animal husbandry was the subsistence strategy for the inhabitants of EBA Küllüoba. Strong evidence is also found to suggest that Early Bronze Age Küllüoba functioned as an egalitarian farming community organized around extended families.