By Beaudry, Mary Carolyn; Metheny, Karen Bescherer

What are the origins of agriculture? In what methods have technological advances with regards to meals affected human improvement? How have meals and foodways been used to create identification, converse which means, and set up society? during this hugely readable, illustrated quantity, archaeologists and different students from around the globe discover those questions and more.

The Archaeology of nutrition offers greater than 250 entries spanning geographic and temporal contexts and lines fresh discoveries along the result of many years of analysis. The participants offer overviews of present wisdom and theoretical views, increase key questions, and delve into myriad clinical, archaeological, and fabric analyses so as to add intensity to our knowing of meals. The encyclopedia serves as a reference for students and scholars in archaeology, nutrition experiences, and similar disciplines, in addition to interesting examining for culinary historians, nutrients writers, and meals and archaeology enthusiasts.

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Phytoliths have been used to identify particular farming strategies, such as irrigation. Researchers discovered that phytoliths of domesticated grasses such as wheat and emmer produce more silicified cells in irrigated versus dry-farming contexts, for example. This discovery allowed archaeobotanists to document irrigation at Chalcolithic sites in Jordan. Soil chemistry helps to identify agricultural spaces and even the possible crops cultivated. The identification of high phosphate levels has enabled researchers to locate habitation sites, middens, and farming loci.

Agricultural populations, because of their size and sedentism, and the partial replacement of wild resources in the environment around them, cannot so easily fall back on other resources. Moreover, domesticated plants are far more prone to failure than are wild resources. Domesticates typically have had their chemical defenses (which may, for example, be distasteful) or physical defenses (thorns or thick seed coats) bred out of them, leaving them more vulnerable to pests and disease. They often have lost the ability to propagate without human aid.

And Kathryn L. Gleason, eds. 1994. The Archaeology of Garden and Field. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Morehart, Christopher T. 2012. Mapping Ancient Chinampa Landscapes in the Basin of Mexico: A Remote Sensing and GIS Approach. Journal of Archaeological Science 39(7):2541–51. Nichols, Deborah L. 1988. Infrared Aerial Photography and Prehispanic Irrigation at Teotihuacan: The Tlajinga Canals. Journal of Field Archaeology 15(1):17–27. Parcack, Sarah H. 2009. Satellite Remote Sensing for Archaeology.

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