Re-examining millet impressions in Usatovo clay materials from NW Black Sea region, Ukraine
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Re-examining millet impressions in Usatovo clay materials from NW Black Sea region, Ukraine Ting An 1,2
&
Galyna Pashkevich 3 & Martin Jones 2
Received: 27 March 2018 / Accepted: 20 September 2018 / Published online: 17 November 2018 # The Author(s) 2018
Abstract The past decade has witnessed debates on the coherence of trans-Eurasian interaction into a particular episode, either the movement of ‘cultural package’ circulating around the 2nd millennium BC or a process more dispersed in time and space. Of particular are the very early published records of broomcorn and foxtail millet in Western Eurasia. Records of charred millet in Europe pre-dating the fifth millennium BC have been called into question using direct radiocarbon dating. The other component of the early millet evidence, impressions in ceramics, consequently becomes critical. In this article, we re-examine a key subassemblage of early millet impressions in Europe, specifically those found in Usatovo materials from NW Black Sea Region (Ukraine) as a case study to assess the authenticity of such identifications. We conclude that SEM examination of Usatovo samples reveals insufficient evidence for a secure identification of Panicum miliaceum although the void dimensions may be plausible. We also draw attention to features that could usefully be sought when examining impressions in the future. Keywords Usatovo . Millet impression . Casting . SEM examination
Introduction West and East Eurasia have interacted since prehistoric times. By the first millennium BC, the evidence of trans-Eurasian exchange includes material culture and texts (the historical Silk Road). Archaeologists through time have been looking for traces before the first millennium BC, for example through studies of metallurgy, and have managed to take the interaction into the second millennium BC. However, if we go earlier, there are many other claims of substantially early interaction between communities to the west of Altai and those to the east of Altai. Some claims are contentious while others are not. Among all claims, of particular interest is the spread of broomcorn and foxtail millet across Eurasia. A significant number of Panicum miliaceum records are from pre-5000
* Ting An [email protected] 1
School of Humanities, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
2
Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
3
Retired from Institute of Geological Sciences, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kiev, Ukraine
BC sites in Europe (Hunt et al. 2008). Such early dates have been called into question by direct dating evidence of charred broomcorn millets found in Europe, which demonstrates grains as small as the millets could move downwards into earlier stratigraphic levels (Motuzaite-Matuzeviciute et al. 2013). Beyond charred grain, early European millet dates also come from grain impressions in ceramics, which are the focus of this paper. Here, we assess the robustness of the evidence from grain impressions for a pre second millennium BC spread of
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