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Abstract

Many of today's major food crops are distributed worldwide. While much of this ‘food globalisation’ hasresulted from modern trade networks, it has its roots in prehistory. In this paper, we examine cerealcrops that moved long distances across the Old World between 5000 and 1500 BC. Drawing togetherrecent archaeological evidence, we are now able to construct a new chronology and biogeography ofprehistoric food globalisation. Here we rationalize the evidence for this process within three successiveepisodes: pre-5000 BC, between 5000 and 2500 BC, and between 2500 and 1500 BC. Each episode can becharacterized by distinct biogeographical patterns, social drivers of the crop movements, and ecologicalconstraints upon the crop plants. By 1500 BC, this process of food globalisation had brought togetherpreviously isolated agricultural systems, to constitute a new kind of agriculture in which the bringingtogether of local and exotic crops enables a new form of intensification.

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Liu, X and Jones, PJ and Matuzeviciute, GM and Hunt, HV and Lister, DL and An, T and Przelomska, N and Kneale, CJ and Zhao, Z and Jones, MK
Keywords:	anthropocene, paleogeography, global, archaeobotany, food globalisation in prehistory, millet, wheat and barley, rice, sorghum
Journal or Publication Title:	Quaternary Science Reviews
Publisher:	Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd
ISSN:	0277-3791
DOI / ID Number:	10.1016/j.quascirev.2018.12.017
Copyright Information:	Copyright 2018 Elsevier Ltd.
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