Hunter-gatherer plant use in southwest Asia: the path to agriculture

This paper focuses on plant use by the last hunter-gatherers in the Levant from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) to the first experiments with plant cultivation at the beginning of the Holocene. This review of Epipaleolithic and Early Neolithic plant use summarises available archaeobotanical and technological data. Information far the Early Epipalaeolithic, especially from the site of Ohalo II, shows that, from the LGM, humans had access to exceptionally rich plant,food staples that included smallgrained grasses and wild barley (Hordeum spontaneum) and wild wheat (Triticum dicoccoides). Grasses seem to have been the staple plant foods but other plants were also present: wild pulses, acorns, almonds, pistachios, wild olives, fruits, and berries. Grinding and pounding stone tools were in use at this time far processing plant resources. During the Late Epipaleolithic (Natufian) period plant use intensified, as can be seen in the site of Abu Hureyra. The seed assemblage from Abu Hureyra I may have included more than 120 food types comprising possible staples such as the grain of wild rye (Secale spp.) and wheat (Triticum spp.), feather grasses (Stipa and Stipagrostis spp.), club-rush (Scirpus maritimus), Euphrates knotgrass (Polygonum corrigioloides), small-seeded grasses, and wild shrubby chenopods (Atriplex spp. and others). The presence in Natufian siles of tools with glossy edges that were used for harvesting cereals, and the widespread nature of mortars suggest that cereals were a more common food. During the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), the first experiments with cultivation of morphologically wild cereals, and also probably of legumes, took place. This involved cereals such as wild emmer (T. dicoccoides), wild einkorn (T. boeoticum), wild barley (Hordeum spontaneum) and wild oat (Avena sterilis), and pulses such as rambling vetch (Vicia peregrina) and probably others. Human manipulalion of plant resources opened the path to domestication with the first evidence found during the Early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (EPPNB). However, the exploitation of wild plants continued to be important far these societies, as is suggested by the admixture of plant exploitation strategies during most of the PPN period and the late establishment of crop 'packages' during the Late PPNB.Peer Reviewe