Millets and Herders: The Origins of Plant Cultivation in Semiarid North Gujarat (India)

• Autores: Juan José García-Granero, Carla Lancelotti, Marco Madella, P Ajithprasad
• Localización: Current anthropology: A world journal of the sciences of man, ISSN 0011-3204, Nº. 2, 2016, págs. 149-173
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Botanical evidence suggests that North Gujarat (India) was a primary center of plant domestication during the mid-Holocene. However, lack of systematic archaeobotanical research and significant taphonomic processes have so far hampered the possibility of substantiating this hypothesis. This paper explores the role of plants in the subsistence strategies of early-middle Holocene populations in this semiarid region and the processes leading to plant cultivation. To do so, we carry out a multiproxy archaeobotanical study�integrating macro and microbotanical remains�at two hunter-gatherer and agropastoral occupations. The results show that the progressive weakening of the Indian summer monsoon ca. 7,000 years ago compelled human populations to adopt seminomadic pastoralism and plant cultivation, which resulted in the domestication of several small millet species, pulses, and sesame.