- Bees? We don’t need no stinkin’ bees.
- “…a distinct product of America…”
- Friesians? We don’t need no stinkin’ Friesians.
- Kenya tests for Ug99 resistance.
- Iceland’s horses walk funny.
- Neanderthals ate snails.
- Bear meat? We don’t need no stinkin’ bear meat.
- Organic agriculture in China gets NPR treatment, survives.
- Rice? We don’t need no stinkin’ rice.
Williams honoured
Congratulations to our friend and colleague David Williams. He was co-author on a paper about ancient squash seeds that made Archaeology’s Top 10 Discoveries of 2007. Sorry we didn’t catch it earlier…
Taro in the Indo-Pacific
The 19th Congress of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association is going to take place 29 Nov.-5 Dec. 2009 at the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences Conference Centre, Hanoi, Vietnam. One of the suggested sessions is on taro:
Wet Cultivation of Colocasia esculenta in the Indo-Pacific: Archaeological, Technological, Social, and Biological Perspectives.
David Addison (American Samoa Community College) and Matthew Spriggs (Australian National University)
add1ison(at)gmail.com; matthew.spriggs(at)anu.edu.auWet cultivation of taro (Colocasia esculenta) is among the most productive traditional agricultural techniques in the world, rivaled only by the homologous systems based on rice (Oryza sativa). Some of the largest stone constructions in the Pacific relate to wet taro cultivation. Research on wet taro in Oceania has focused on: the role of agricultural intensification in development of political and social complexity; aggression and territoriality; risk management; and initial island colonization. This session seeks to bring together researchers from across the Indo-Pacific region to discuss the wet cultivation of Colocasia esculenta from diverse perspectives. Participants will be asked to have papers ready for posting to a website by 1 October 2009. This will give everyone a chance to read each other’s ideas in detail. The IPPA session will then consist of short presentations and ample time for discussion. Selected participants will be asked to revise their papers immediately after the conference for publication in an edited volume scheduled for early 2010.
Thanks to Lois Englberger for the tip.
Nibbles: Brew, India, Coffee, Quinoa, Sheep, Snails, Maps
- Beer diversity to die for. Luigi comments: “Only 300?”
- Giant claims, some false, for genetic resources in North-East India.
- Coffee good for wild tree biodiversity. Joe unavailable for comment.
- How Alejandro Bonifacio saved quinoa. PROINPA comments: “And me?”
- Sheep manure’s contribution to Portuguese rye agriculture.
- Circum-Mediterranean escargotières.
- Map it or lose it.
Domestication trifecta
We’ve blogged a number of times about the paradigm shift that’s occurring among students of plant domestication, driven by increasing interaction and synergy between archaeologists and geneticists. The idea of “rapid, localised” domestication is down if not out: all the talk these days is of domestication as a protracted, multi-locational and biologically complex process.
Well, there’s a very nice review of the history of this shift in Trends in Ecology and Evolution, at least as it concerns the crops domesticated in the Fertile Crescent. It is only very recently that geneticists have looked at their molecular data in the light of archaeological results and realized that there were other ways to interpret them apart from the conventional idea of domestication in one place over the course of a few human generations.
Meanwhile, a paper in Annals of Botany looks at another source of data, i.e. written sources. Chinese investigators have looked at references to eggplants in ancient encyclopedias, concordances and even poetry, and charted changes in size, shape and taste over the past 2000 years. The oldest reference dates back to 59 BC, and since then the Chinese eggplant has gone from round to a variety of shapes, has increased dramatically in size, and has become much sweeter.
Finally, our friend Hannes Dempewolf and co-authors have a paper in GRACE which looks in detail at domestication in the Compositae. Why have only a handful of species in this family been fully domesticated? Secondary defence compounds, inulin as a storage product and wind dispersal, the authors suggest.