Archaeobotanical data from the early Neolithic of Bulgaria

Almost all of the crop plants recorded for the entire Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods of Bulgaria were present from the earliest stages of the Neolithic (6000-5605 cal BC). The cultivated plants correspond to the so called Near Eastern crop assemblage. The natural distributions of many of the weeds discovered at the sites are in the Mediterranean area and this also confirms the Near Eastern connections. The crop stores found in the houses show that the cereals were kept in an un-threshed state, and the high concentration of chaff suggests that they were threshed and cleaned on site. The prevailing sowing time was autumn and the fields were on light, sandy soils with high fertility. The indication from some of the weeds is that the cereals were harvested low to the ground. Differences between the regions of Bulgaria and the various time periods seem to be more apparent in terms of the quantitative proportions of the crops rather than in the principal composition of the cultivated plants; in some cases these differences might reflect limited data rather than real discrepancies.status: publishe