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Phytolith identification criteria for foxtail and broomcorn millets: a new approach to calculating crop ratios

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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.

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Acknowledgments

The phytolith analysis was undertaken as part of Alison Weisskopf’s PhD project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK. Many thanks are due to Li Liu and Xingcan Chen for the samples from Huizui, to Ma Xoalin and Li Xinwei for the samples from Xipo, Qin Ling, and Peking University for the samples from Baligang and Zhenhua Deng and Dorian Fuller for the macro data from Baligang. Thanks to Shelly Cleave at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew for allowing me access to millets from the grass garden, and Freea Itzstein Davey for her collection from the Lower Yangtze. The material for the references came from a variety of sources: the Herbarium at the Institute of Archaeology, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew grass collection, plants collected by the author and colleagues in northern China, Henan and the Yangtze Delta. S. italica and P. miliaceum were grown in London in 2005/6 from seeds sourced from the United States Department of Agriculture.

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  1. Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London, UK

    Alison Ruth Weisskopf

  2. Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA

    Gyoung-Ah Lee

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  1. Alison Ruth Weisskopf
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Correspondence to Alison Ruth Weisskopf.

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Weisskopf, A.R., Lee, GA. Phytolith identification criteria for foxtail and broomcorn millets: a new approach to calculating crop ratios. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 8, 29–42 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-014-0190-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-014-0190-7

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