Agricultural and Pastoral Landscapes in Pre-Industrial Society: Choices, Stability and Change

Preface

Patricia C. Anderson and Leonor Peña-Chocarro

Scientific Overview

This book takes an interdisciplinary look at European preindustrial agriculture, including its origins and its diffusion outside Europe. Agriculture and its origins have long been lively and innovative subjects of research, involving people working in a variety of disciplines. Initial impetus to this area came from several quite separate disciplines. Archaeologists working in the 1940s and 1950s, studied flint blades found on archaeological sites in the Middle East and in Europe, which they hypothesised had been inserts forming the working parts of agricultural tools. Such identifications were based upon intimate knowledge of ethnographic tools (Steensberg 1943), and by examining the microscopic traces of use on their edges (Semenov 1964). Agronomists, in turn, interested in the origins of agriculture studied the behaviour of wild cereals still growing in their natural habitats and explored the way human activities may have influenced crop evolution (Harlan 1975). This area of study, pioneered by a few researchers like O. Heer (1865), lead agronomists and botanists towards the beginnings of archaeobotanical research (e.g. Hopf 1954, 1955). Over time, however, the study of agriculture evolved towards an interdisciplinary approach which tried to fully understand its multiple facets: plants, techniques, soil types, environment, agronomic practices, the attendant animal husbandry, impact on landscape, traditions, etc. In other words, the cross-disciplinary character of the subject implied the integration of the various historical, anthropological, archaeological and scientific records in order to fully appreciate the complex and interrelated issues involved.

Thus, archaeobotanists have looked at prehistoric seeds of ancient crops throughout the world to determine the presence of domesticated plants and explore the possible uses of the species identified. Other studies combined analysis of archaeological plant remains with field and genetic studies of equivalent crops still surviving today (Zohary and Hopf 2012; Harlan 1999), and documented the origin and spread of the domesticated plants from the Near East throughout Europe. Weeds have also been a subject of interest, used to explore crop husbandry practices (Charles et al. 1997, Jones et al. 2010). In particular, crop processing has been a major topic of interest in the study of agriculture. Ethnographic observations of the various steps within the crop processing sequence have allowed researchers to produce models (Hillman 1981, 1984; taken up later by e.g. Peña-Chocarro 1999) and statistical methods (e.g. Jones 1984, 1987; Pearsall 1988) to identify these from crop remains, which in dry sites are usually preserved by charring. This experimental approach was applied by archaeobotanists using reconstructions of specific archaeological tools preserved in European lake sites, again to see the effect on the crops (Meurers-Balke and Lüning 1999). Waterlogged archaeological sites with exceptional preservation of plant remains have allowed detailed studies of plant use with interesting insights into processing activities, among other things (Herbig 2009, Jacomet 2009) as have rare finds from permafrost (Rollo 2002; Heiss and Oeggl 2009; Dickson 2011).

Pollen analysis has also contributed to treating the question of cereal domestication (Bottema 1999), reconstructing archaeological fields and characterising agricultural practices such as the identification of the slash-and-burn technique in the Nordic areas (Vuorela 1986). And, on a more general level, palynologists have shown the role of both the natural environment and prehistoric human activities in the shaping of landscapes, both based on pollen evidence itself (Kalis et al 2003; Carrión et al. 2007) and on other microfossils in pollen records, the so-called NPPs (‘non-pollen palynomorphs’, such as fungal and fern spores, remains of green algae and cyanobacteria, or invertebrate eggs; e.g. Van Geel et al. 2003).

Experimental archaeology has also proven to be a powerful approach to the study of agriculture, with a myriad of examples focusing on specific processes. Agricultural field experiments were carried out in northern Europe by archaeologists, for example using reconstructed ploughs and ards to work fields (Lerche and Steensberg 1980). This led to precise reconstructions of marks in the soil, as well as of archaeological finds of ploughs and ards (Lerche 1994). Other experiments focused on soil, climate and yield of ancient cereal types (Reynolds 1981; Steensberg 1943). By combining soil micromorphology and archaeobotany with an experimental approach (Boissinot and Brochier 1997), it was possible to show field use patterns from as early as the Neolithic in southern Europe (Rösch et al. 2002).

Historical records and agronomy were combined to evaluate the cultural influence on concepts of yield (Sigaut 1999) while historians interested in archaeology carried out research into the effect on the soil and the crops of certain farming techniques in large-scale field experiments (Reynolds 1974, 1979, 1981, 1999). Storage pits, for instance, were reproduced and tested using historic and ethnographic references, and were shown to be effective for storing grain similar to ancient varieties (Reynolds 1974). This allowed new interpretations of such archaeological features (Gast and Sigaut 1979–85).

Some field experiments were also carried out using reconstructions of harvesting tools based on prehistoric finds which involved measuring the harvesting yield with different kinds of tools, and then studying the experimental tools for traces of use (Korobkova 1981). High-power microscopy, combined with the experiments, allowed finer distinctions of different tool uses and their contact with plant material (Anderson 1999).

New field experiments were designed on a regional basis to test specific tools on ancient crops grown under climatic conditions similar to the past, or on wild cereals (Anderson et al. 1991; Anderson 1999; Hillman 1999). These new analyses often disproved or greatly nuanced another archaeological assumption: that all flint tools with gloss were agricultural harvesting tools (Juel Jensen 1988, 1994; Van Gijn 1999). Historical and ethnographic studies (e.g. Sigaut 1978) came to similar conclusions, that ‘sickles’ were sometimes used to obtain other materials such as reeds and straw or were not even sickles at all, but rather inserts in threshing tools (Anderson and Inizan 1994). In addition, specialised threshing tools, threshing floors and storage facilities were increasingly being found in the archaeological record in the Near East and southern Europe (Avner 1998; Skakun 1999; Gast and Sigaut 1979–85; Kuijt and Finlayson 2009; Miret i Mestre 2006; Cunningham 2011). These were identified by means of experiments (Anderson et al. 2004), ancient descriptions and ethnography (Kardulias and Yerkes 1996; Grégoire in Anderson and Inizan 2004; Ataman 1999). Experiments were also part of the research carried out to investigate the effects of different grinding and pounding tools on the grain and to seek to find a full range of wear and archaeobotanical criteria to identify the function of ancient tools (Procopiou et al. 2002).

Examination of historical documents such as the earliest cuneiform tablets, combined with these experiments, gave further insight into grain processing and social organisation during the third millennium in the Near East (Grégoire 1999). The same applies to agricultural techniques and tools from Medieval Europe, thanks to the study of historical texts (Comet 1992) and ethnographic and archaeological investigation (Mingote Calderón 1996).

Diet and the social context of food are other rich topics of research, involving historical documents (Carpinschi 2002), ethnoarchaeobotanical studies (Sarpaki 2000), and archaeobotanical analysis including funerary offerings (Marinval 1993; Rottoli and Castiglioni 2011) and of luxury foods (Bakels and Jacomet 2003; Van der Veen 2003; Palmer and Van der Veen 2002; Van der Veen 2008). New methods for identifying microscopic food remains (e.g. Winton and Winton 1932, 1935; Gassner et al. 1989) used the analysis of plant tissue fragments, phytoliths and starch (Dickson 1987; Hansson and Isaksson 1994; Cummings 1992; Perry et al. 2007; Gong et al. 2011; Valamoti et al. 2008; Henry et al. 2009; Revedin et al. 2010) or the chemical analyses of pottery residues (Evershed et al. 2008), all of which opened up new avenues of research.

The complexity of agricultural processes and their organisation within particular communities and societies requires a broad analytical scale on which to investigate them. The archaeology, anthropology and history of the landscape has been popular for some thirty years, linked by a common concern with going ‘beyond the site’ and situating human activity in its broadest context (Kardulias 1994). During the last twenty years there has been a considerable output of theory and methodology for investigating social and cultural as well as physical landscapes (e.g. Anschuetz et al. 2001; Ashmore and Knapp 1999; Francovich and Patterson 2000; Behre and Jacomet 1991). This has been complemented by a series of highly intensive, interdisciplinary surveys carrying out empirical analyses of particular landscapes within these theoretical frameworks (e.g. Astill and Davies 1999; Barker 1996; Cherry et al. 1991; Given and Knapp 2003; Kohler-Schneider 2001; Fischer and Rösch 2010; Stika et al. 2008).

This rapid overview shows some of the important scientific results of the above research approaches, and the many new insights they have provided into the human experience of agriculture. These approaches, however, have far greater potential to grow further if allowed to work closely together. Archaeological data and historical records on their own are often not specific enough for the identification of particular agricultural practices. Scientists analysing pollen, phytoliths, seeds and wear traces on tools can now identify particular species and techniques and develop sophisticated taxonomies, but are often forced by practical limitations to work in relative isolation from other interpretative sources. In both cases, disciplines have usually become highly specialised, and paradoxically isolated by their very development and institutionalisation. This has often created a barrier to the investigation of the broader agricultural system with all its actors, strategies and landscapes.

The Origin of the Programme

During the 1980s and early 1990s, a European working group met which was concerned with ‘agro-(for agrarian) archaeology’, combining archaeologists, archaeobotanists, ethnographers, historians and agronomists, around experiments in archaeology. The principal impetus was given by Jutta Meurers-Balke in Cologne, the late Sytze Bottema in Groningen, Holland, the late Peter Reynolds of Butser farm in England, Grith Lerche and the late Axel Steensberg in Copenhagen, and the late François Sigaut in Paris, France.

Following on this, in 1998 a new group concerned with preserving the knowledge and cultural heritage of agricultural processes began to meet, its members combining several different strands of research from the earlier group. In addition, its organisers felt it was urgent to record the knowledge and skills of agriculturalists that still use or remember ‘traditional’, nonindustrial techniques, and to find a means for this knowledge to enter into the mainstream of various disciplines in a dynamic way. At the time, such an ambition was largely outside the mainstream tendencies of the different disciplines.

This group, called ‘Early Agricultural Remnants and Technical Heritage’ (EARTH) was recognised by the Sub-Committee on Cultural Heritage of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, who formally admitted EARTH as a member of the PACT alliance of networks, and to the Fédération Européenne des Réseaux Européens de Coopération Scientifique et Technique de Coordination. EARTH was also formally accredited to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Unfortunately, however, these affiliations did not include funding for a project.

Preparation of this ESF (European Science Foundation) programme took several years: The first EARTH committee meetings were held in St. Vallier de Thiey, Southern France in 1998, funded by the French CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), then in Copenhagen in November 1999 and at Butser Ancient Farm in England in January 2001, culminating in an ESF-funded preparatory workshop at St. Martin de Vésubie, Southern France, in November 2001.

In parallel, from 2002 to the present, the CNRS funded a group of twenty French EARTH members working in France in different disciplines and field areas as a ‘Groupement de Recherche’ (GDR 2517, directed by P. Anderson). Its aims, similar to those of the European-based ESF programme, have been to use various media to record preindustrial agricultural activities from ancient times and the present day, prepare a database for films and images, and to feed this information into the EARTH network as a whole. The funding of new field research for its members has contributed to some of the articles in this book.

The Network: Working Methods Leading to this Book

The EARTH Monograph Series, entitled ‘The dynamics of non-industrial agriculture: 8,000 years of resilience and innovation’, was born from a unique opportunity for interdisciplinary and international (especially inter-European) collaboration between 2004 and 2009 as part of the ‘Early Agricultural Remnants and Technical Heritage’ (EARTH) Scientific ‘à la carte’ Programme of the European Science Foundation (ESF, Strasbourg, France), financially supported by 15 European organisations, which were represented by Steering Committee Members of the Programme (p. 371).

This ESF-funded EARTH programme was organised and chaired by Patricia C. Anderson, Nice, France and Michael Given, Glasgow (replaced in 2006 by Leonor Peña-Chocarro, Madrid and Rome).

The originality of this programme lay in the means it provided for unusual networking methods and for innovative forms of output. The aim was to find new common ground for integrating different approaches, viewing agriculture from the standpoint of the human actors involved, and fit this together into a form which could be effectively transmitted for research and teaching, as well as for heritage.

In order to achieve the programme’s goals to stimulate the creation of new, integrated interdisciplinary approaches, collaborations and networks, researchers and advanced students were chosen from different disciplines but who worked in an interdisciplinary manner. Some were chosen by the programme organisers, whereas others were suggested to them by the contributing European national organisations (refer to page vi with the ESF Member Organisations), meaning that most of the group did not know one another at the outset. It brought together scientists from a variety of different disciplines of the human and natural sciences: archaeology (including archaeobotany and archaeozoology, microwear analysis of tool function, experimental archaeology), ethnography, history, geography and geology, from about twenty European countries, as well as from North America and the Middle East.

The researchers were organised into three teams, each led by two experts from different countries, while respecting the stipulation of the ESF that as many different disciplinary fields and nationalities as possible be combined in each team, as well as researchers of varied age and at different stages of their career. The European Science Foundation emphasised networking and learning through exchange and communication, and funded annual team meetings and three plenary meetings. Such meetings allowed comparison of different points of view and of agricultural systems in different regions.

Each team approached the theme of agriculture from a slightly different standpoint – that of Crop Choice and Diversity (Book 1 in the series), Skills, Processes and Tools (Book 2 in the series), and Agricultural Landscapes (Book 3 in the series). The networking was achieved largely by workshops held in archaeological and ethnographic field areas or local museums that were directly relevant to the research of certain members (see pp. 319–321). They provided an important opportunity to exchange as well as to talk with local farmers and artisans. Although a few grants were provided for members to meet and work on methodological fine-tuning, no funding was provided by this ESF programme for new field research to authors contributing to this book. Nevertheless, the richness and originality of the scope of the articles presented here was achieved in many cases through networking activities among scientists during the programme. The programme also funded activities for advanced students: to attend hands-on summer schools taught by members and run by Leonor Peña Chocarro in a traditional agricultural area of Spain, and grants to attend the Programme’s various meetings. All networking activities were efficiently implemented by Marie Russel, Paris, who served as the programme’s coordinator from 2004 to 2009.

Some of the papers in this series address field areas and topics emanating from the workshops, and they were developed gradually over the course of the five years of interdisciplinary exchange. Although the authors come originally from various different fields related to the study of agriculture, they shared an interest in developing a common ground where individual research fields could converge into a broader framework, and provide a new knowledge base. Many contributions integrate field and laboratory methodologies into the case studies, in a manner intended to be accessible to students and researchers in different fields, as well as to an interested general public. Ethnoarchaeological studies figure prominently, and help inject the human perspective into the study of agriculture.

Each article in these volumes has received doubleblind peer review from two outside experts. Using numerous illustrations, they provide synthetic, interdisciplinary overviews, or detailed accounts of individual and collaborative research, and in some cases relevant experts outside the programme were invited to participate. However, this book series does not seek to – and indeed cannot – provide complete coverage of all disciplines, research themes, time periods, or geographical regions relevant to the study of agriculture, nor could all the relevant experts in each field be included. Each book should instead be seen as a sampling of exciting ways to explore the subject of preindustrial agriculture and its relevance to life today. This book series is an example of the power of academic networking and of the benefits of approaching the theme of agriculture from different angles and perspectives converging into a common space different from that of the researchers’ individual fields of expertise. But it would not have seen the light of day without the devotion of the coordinating editor, Andreas G. Heiss, Vienna, and the language editor, Cozette Griffin-Kremer, Paris. Alexandre Chevalier, Brussels, ensured that abundant maps were made to cover the wide range of areas discussed.

The journey has been arduous, sometimes frustrating, but always fascinating and full of good memories. We hope that the final outcome of our programme, this book series, is of value to other scholars and interested people. It is also our hope that it leads to further work by opening new avenues into the study of agriculture.

Patricia C. Anderson

CNRS, Nice, France

Leonor Peña-Chocarro

CSIC, Madrid, Spain and Rome, Italy

Series Editors of the EARTH Series

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Introduction: Strategies that Shaped Non-Industrial Landscapes

Althea L. Davies, Felix Retamero and Inge Schjellerup

‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there’

(L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between, 1953)

This may not be a surprising quote to preface a volume of studies on past interactions between humans and their environment, but it is particularly apt since differing methodological insights into past human choices are a central theme of this contribution. Understanding motivations and decision-making processes in past cultures is complex since surviving evidence relates to the outcomes of decisions and aspects of the associated socio-economic and environmental context, rather than the chain of reasoning that led to a particular choice. Decisions are also seen through the filter of surviving written archives or environmental proxies which form the basis for reconstructing and understanding the past. Landscape provides a common focus for the papers, forming a ‘material manifestation of the relation between humans and the environment’ (Crumley 1994) and therefore also a record of past cultural choices. It also provides a productive theme for disciplinary interaction and exchange in our efforts to ‘read the landscape’.

Given the complexity of landscape as a record and the filters that interpose between past choices, actions and the traces that remain for us to study, it is hardly surprising that scholars, particularly archaeologists, have explored alternative ideological approaches and innovative interdisciplinary collaborations in an attempt to come closer to the lived experience of past societies (e.g. Tilley 1994; Fyfe et al. 2010) and have also embraced methodological advances that can help reveal more about the ways in which resources and materials were used in past cultures, notably archaeological science techniques (e.g. Parker-Pearson 2003). The development and adoption of interdisciplinary frameworks that draw on social and ecological concepts can also provide more nuanced insights into past socio-ecological relations and responses (e.g. Redman and Kinzig 2003; van der Leeuw et al. 2011). Thoughtful and critical multi-disciplinary investigations, such as those presented in this volume, form the foundations for such frameworks.

Modern global concerns have also given additional impetus and direction to many researchers studying long-term landscape dynamics, not least the attrition of traditional ecological and cultural knowledge and skills with increasing industrialisation that contributed to the formation of the EARTH network. During this era of environmental uncertainty, international attention has increasingly focused on intensified human impacts on natural resources and the deterioration in many cultural and natural landscapes (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005; Steffen et al. 2007). This has contributed to greater recognition of the value of cultural heritage and the development of conventions that stress the need for national and international cooperation to value, restore and sustainably manage landscapes for the cultural services that they contribute to our well-being (e.g. European Landscape Convention 2004; Faro Value of Cultural Heritage for Society 2005). Although political emphasis has focused on the last 50–100 years, fundamental and irreversible shifts in our relationship with the environment began at least 100 years earlier and the period since around 1800 is now recognised, marking an important transition to this new era of intensified human impacts in many parts of the globe (Steffen et al. 2007). Integrated human-environmental histories are an important resource for understanding global change because Earth system changes are strongly affected by long-term human-environment interactions and future conditions will most likely lie outside human experience or living memory (Williams and Jackson 2007; van der Leeuw et al. 2011).

In many of these areas – archaeological and historical research, heritage and environmental management policy – there has been an increasing shift in focus from individual resources, such as archaeological monuments or a particular species, to a landscape- and ecosystem-scale approach. This shift in focus indicates the importance of perspective, since our understanding of connectivity, normality, variability, resilience and vulnerability are all historically contingent and dependent on the scale at which a system or set of interactions is viewed. While the past can contribute the value of hindsight to studies of recent change (Dearing et al. 2006), the present – including anthropological and ethnographic data - also provides a useful reminder of the complex and often apparently irrational ways in which we make decisions, all of which are likely to have shaped the traces of past choices and responses that researchers using cultural and natural archives seek to understand.

Although human curiosity over traces of past societies and land-uses has a long history, the diversity of past interactions between ecosystems and human activities – ‘socio-ecological systems’ – means that generating case studies which are representative of the diversity of places, people, responses and conditions is an almost impossible task. Threats to existing landscapes and material culture brought about by changes in land-use, environmental change or socio-political instability also provide an incentive for continued study to rescue and record traces before they are permanently lost. Carefully designed case studies using a wide range of disciplinary approaches therefore remain the fundamental building blocks for understanding our diverse and dynamic natural and cultural heritage.

While this rationale may serve as a universal justification for the study of pre-industrial landscapes, given the number and diversity of well-regarded publications on landscape, another contribution requires some explanation. So how do we approach landscape and what distinguishes this book? As set out in the preface, the formation of the EARTH network created an opportunity for comparison across research cultures, geographical and disciplinary divisions to explore some of this diversity of disciplines and cultures and for us to reflect on the breadth of experience and evidence to look at our own work with fresh eyes. This volume focusses on the changing patterns within agricultural landscapes which result from societal choices, including those driven by social, economic and environmental change. The recurring issues revolve around the themes of choices, change and stability. Given increased political and academic acknowledgement of the threats facing heritage as a resource, and the value of landscape and heritage to continued human well-being, this volume is also a timely contribution since many current biodiversity and heritage values are a legacy of non-industrial agricultural knowledge, skills and practices (e.g. Agnoletti 2006).

By presenting case-studies, contributors focus on past decision-making processes which determined the sites selected for settlement and agricultural activities, and which shaped the character and scale of the systems built by pre-industrial agriculturalists. These provide a framework for understanding (1) how past agricultural societies adapted to the environmental and climatic constraints which characterised their landscapes (e.g. drought, humidity, slopes, infertile soils), (2) how they responded to change (environmental, social, economic) and (3) thus whether these decision-making strategies and the systems they created were, at different points in time, resilient or fragile and unstable. The theme of resilience, that is, the adaptive capacity of socio-ecological systems, thus forms a common thread through these contributions. Although the case studies cover a broad chronological and geographical spectrum, each follows a common framework. First, the contributions describe the agrarian system in question, including the scale of the system. Second, a methodological approach describes how each case study has been analysed and interpreted. Third, the question of why the system worked as it did is addressed. This allows each chapter to build from local case studies towards a broader consideration of how cultural norms and technologies interacted with socio-economic and environmental systems, and how these customs and interactions influenced the choices of different communities, including their ability or willingness to adapt. Broadly, the time period covered ranges from the Neolithic to the end of pre-industrial agricultural systems during the historic past. It is not our intention to cover all periods comprehensively, but rather to concentrate on the particular research strengths and experiences of the contributing authors, to illustrate broad common themes, issues and particular methodological approaches to the study of landscape in pre-industrial societies. The geographical scope is predominantly European, but also includes complementary examples from the Eastern Mediterranean and South America.

The contributions are structured into three sections to draw out particular commonalities and contrasts in the choices made by pre-industrial communities in the construction of varied landscapes and cultural heritage:

Each section is prefaced by an introduction which indicates how the papers contribute to common themes or contrasts within that section, and their contribution to the overall themes of the volume. Complementing the landscape-scale perspective into pre-industrial decision-making offered in this volume, Volume 1 in the EARTH series takes up the theme of plant resources – the societal and ideological motivations behind choices in wild and domestic species, the ecological impacts of these choices and their role in pre-industrial society and identify, while Volume 2 deals with the technological constraints and innovations that enabled societies to survive and thrive across a range of environmental conditions.

The transition to industrial technologies and ways of thinking about people and the environment during the Anthropocene marks a notional end point for many of the studies in this volume, but in several of the contributions, the authors reflect on the importance of non-industrial legacies for landscape futures, and the role of knowledge and practice as part of the repertoire of responses – the social memory – that can help inform our approach to future sustainable resource management. This includes managing mountain biodiversity and recreation, understanding desert cultures in the face of the global expansion of desert biomes, the restoration of sensitive wetlands, and potential consequences for soil conservation and cultural viability of failure to consider non-industrial practices.

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SECTION 1

Landnám

Introduction

Fèlix Retamero

The papers included in