Barely surviving or more than enough? : the environmental archaeology of subsistence, specialisation and surplus food production / edited by Maaike Groot, Daphne Lentjes and Jørn Zeiler.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Groot, Maaike, editor.

Lentjes, Daphne, editor.

Zeiler, Jørn, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Prehistoric peoples--Food.

Prehistoric peoples.

Agriculture, Prehistoric.

Subsistence economy.

Environmental archaeology.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (302 pages) : illustrations, maps

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Leiden, [Netherlands] : Sidestone Press, 2013.

Summary:

How people produced or acquired their food in the past is one of the main questions in archaeology. Everyone needs food to survive, so the ways in which people managed to acquire it forms the very basis of human existence. Farming was key to the rise of human sedentarism. Once farming moved beyond subsistence, and regularly produced a surplus, it supported the development of specialisation, speeded up the development of socio-economic as well as social complexity, the rise of towns and the development of city states. In short, studying food production is of critical importance in understanding how societies developed. Environmental archaeology often studies the direct remains of food or food processing, and is therefore well-suited to address this topic. What is more, a wealth of new data has become available in this field of research in recent years. This allows synthesising research with a regional and diachronic approach. Indeed, most of the papers in this volume offer studies on subsistence and surplus production with a wide geographical perspective. The research areas vary considerably, ranging from the American Mid-South to Turkey. The range in time periods is just as wide, from c. 7000 BC to the 16th century AD. Topics covered include foraging strategies, the combination of domestic and wild food resources in the Neolithic, water supply, crop specialisation, the effect of the Roman occupation on animal husbandry, town-country relationships and the monastic economy. With this collection of papers and the theoretical framework presented in the introductory chapter, we wish to demonstrate that the topic of subsistence and surplus production remains of interest, and promises to generate more exciting research in the future.

Contents:

Intro

Studying subsistence and surplus production

Maaike Groot1,2 and Daphne Lentjes1

The role of gathering in Middle Archaic social complexity in the Mid-South: a diachronic perspective

Stephen B. Carmody1 and Kandace D. Hollenbach2

Rethinking Neolithic subsistence at the gateway to Europe with new archaeozoological evidence from Istanbul

Canan Çakırlar

Agricultural production between the 6th and the 3rd millennium cal BC in the central part of the Valencia region (Spain)

Guillem Pérez Jordà1 and Leonor Peña-Chocarro2,1

From subsistence to market exchange: the development of an agricultural economy in 1st-millennium-BC Southeast Italy

Daphne Lentjes

Three systems of agrarian exploitation in the Valencian region of Spain (400-300 BC)

Mª Pilar Iborra Eres1 and Guillem Pérez Jordà2

The well in the settlement: a water source for humans and livestock, studied through insect remains from Southeast Sweden

Magnus Hellqvist

The Late Iron Age-Roman transformation from subsistence to surplus production in animal husbandry in the Central and Western parts of the Netherlands

Joyce van Dijk1 and Maaike Groot2,3

Tracing changes in animal husbandry in Mallorca (Balearic Islands, Western Mediterranean) from the Iron Age to the Roman Period

Alejandro Valenzuela1, Josep Antoni Alcover1, Miguel Ángel Cau2

Food production and exchanges in the Roman civitas Tungrorum

Fabienne Pigière1 and Annick Lepot2

Entrepreneurs and traditional farmers: the effects of an emerging market in Middle Saxon England

Matilda Holmes

Scant evidence of great surplus: research at the rural Cistercian monastery of Holme Cultram, Northwest England

Don O'Meara.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (ebrary, viewed December 28, 2016).

ISBN:

90-8890-200-3

OCLC:

967109926