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Earliest direct evidence for broomcorn millet and wheat in the central Eurasian steppe region

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2010

Michael D. Frachetti ,
Robert N. Spengler ,
Gayle J. Fritz  and
Alexei N. Mar'yashev
Michael D. Frachetti*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Washington University in St Louis, 1 Brookings Drive-CB 1114, St Louis, MO 63130, USA
Robert N. Spengler
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Washington University in St Louis, 1 Brookings Drive-CB 1114, St Louis, MO 63130, USA
Gayle J. Fritz
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Washington University in St Louis, 1 Brookings Drive-CB 1114, St Louis, MO 63130, USA
Alexei N. Mar'yashev
Affiliation:
Institute of Archaeology, 44 y. Dostyk, Almaty, 050010, Republic of Kazakhstan
*
Email: frachetti@wustl.edu
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Abstract

Before 3000 BC, societies of western Asia were cultivating wheat and societies of China were cultivating broomcorn millet; these are early nodes of the world's agriculture. The authors are searching for early cereals in the vast lands that separate the two, and report a breakthrough at Begash in south-east Kazakhstan. Here, high precision recovery and dating have revealed the presence of both wheat and millet in the later third millennium BC. Moreover the context, a cremation burial, raises the suggestion that these grains might signal a ritual rather than a subsistence commodity.

Keywords

KazakhstanBronze Agepastoralismcerealswheatmilletagriculturecremation
Type
Research articles
Information
Antiquity , Volume 84 , Issue 326 , December 2010 , pp. 993 - 1010
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2010

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