EMERGENCE

Coral reef schematic demonstrating link between niche construction and emergence.
Coral reef schematic demonstrating link between niche construction and emergence.

Project overview

Agriculture changed humanity and the planet. But remarkably our understanding of plant-use and the evolution of human-environment interactions during the long transition to agriculture (~25-8k cal. BP) in the Levant is limited. There are two key issues: the uneven plant record due to poor macrobotanical preservation; and the lack of off-site sediments and datable material for paleoenvironmental analysis. EMERGENCE will employ machine learning (ML) generated phytolith evidence (robust inorganic silica ‘casts’ of plant-cells) and microbotanical and geoarchaeological methods to study an unprecedented number of archaeological and paleoenvironmental sites. The project focuses on the understudied wetland environments in the Southern Levant (Israel and Jordan) which are crucial for studying the development of food production for three reasons: first, wetlands enabled hunter-gatherers to develop more sedentary lifestyles; second, wetlands support plant species which increase production under human disturbance; and third, wetlands produce a depositional environment which preserves sediment records. 

EMERGENCE will examine the origins of agriculture as an emergent phenomenon. Emergent phenomena are entities that are more than the sum of their parts, arising from the interactions of their constituent parts with each other. Many biological systems exhibit emergent behaviour (e.g., flocks of birds, schools of fish). However less commonly considered is the type of emergence that occurs from interactions through time (e.g., in coral reefs). The build-up of complex, non-linear human-environment interactions in prehistory will link human niche construction dynamics to emergent phenomenon. This project will provide new insights into the changing character of plant food production and assess how human niche construction in and around these anthropogenic wetlands over deep time produced a compounding effect integral to the emergence of agriculture.

Related publications

Ramsey, M. N. 
accepted     Ecological-Cultural Inheritance in the Wetlands: The Non-Linear Transition to Plant-Food Production in the Southern Levant. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany.

Images

phytoliths from the wetlands, woodlands and steppe/parkland
Images of archaeological phytoliths recovered, organized by environment-type: 1. Wetland-type phytoliths, 1a. stacked ‘fan-shaped bulliform’ (cf. reeds) (Kharaneh IV), 1b. sedge cones cf. Scirpus (Ohalo II), 1c. Phragmites culm (Ohalo II); 2. Woodland-type phytoliths, 2a. coarse verrucate (dicot leaf) (Kharaneh IV), 2b. platelet (dicot leaf) (Wadi Madamagh), 2c.scalloped (dicot leaf) (Kharaneh IV); 3. Parkland-type phytoliths, 3a. wild grass husk (Ohalo II), 3b. cereal straw (Ohalo II); 3c. wild grass husk (Kharaneh IV) (image credit: Ramsey and Rosen 2016).

 

diagram of food production
Plant Food Production Model. a. Model based on Smith 2001. b. Schematic model of changing plant-use proportions through time. c. Description of hypothesized shift from wild plant-food procurement to a wetland-based wild plant-food production in the Southern Levant. Niche constructing behaviors outlined that might lead to ecological-cultural inheritances for plant food procurement and production, with the types of archaeological samples and evidence needed to identify this transition.

View the above diagram as a PDF file:

Fig.5 Plant Food Production Model.pdf (500.15 KB)