Phytolith identification criteria for foxtail and broomcorn millets: a new approach to calculating crop ratios
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Phytolith identification criteria for foxtail and broomcorn millets: a new approach to calculating crop ratios Alison Ruth Weisskopf & Gyoung-Ah Lee
Received: 4 October 2013 / Accepted: 27 February 2014 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014
Abstract Broomcorn and Foxtail millets were major crops in the Yellow River Valley region, Henan, China, during the Neolithic Yangshao period. Phytoliths and macro remains have been used to understand crop choices in this period. Distinguishing between phytoliths from millet crops and panicoid non cultigens can be challenging. We examine the effect of using only one or two identification criteria compared with a more stringent five or more with phytoliths from archaeological samples to examine crop ratios. We compare our results with the results from the macro remains. This demonstrates, firstly, that using more identification markers has a very definite effect on the results and secondly, phytoliths and macro remains are complementary proxies that when used together can produce more accurate results than used alone. Keywords Phytoliths . Archaeobotany . Foxtail millet . Broomcorn millet . China . Crops
Introduction Major archaeobotanical finds from Neolithic north central China have shown that both foxtail (Setaria italica ssp. italica P Beauv.) and broomcorn (Panicum miliaceum L.) millets were major crops during this period. These crops have different growing requirements and produce grains with different qualities so understanding where and why they were selected A. R. Weisskopf (*) Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] G.
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