Journal
VEGETATION HISTORY AND ARCHAEOBOTANY
Volume 21, Issue 2, Pages 117-129Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s00334-011-0323-1
Keywords
Archaeobotany; Cyprus; Pre-Pottery Neolithic; Plant domestication; Triticum monococcum; Early farming
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Funding
- UNLV Graduate and Professional Student Association
- UNLV
- UCL Institute of Archaeology
- University College London Graduate School
- National Science Foundation [BCS-0352689]
- Brennan Foundation
- Institute for Aegean Prehistory
- University of Nevada at Las Vegas
- Johnson Foundation
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Charred plant remains from the Cypriot Pre-Pottery Neolithic site of Krittou Marottou 'Ais Yiorkis, situated in the foothills of the Troodos Mountains and dated to ca. 7500 cal. B. C., demonstrate the early introduction of two-grained einkorn (Triticum monococcum sensu lato). Grain measurements of two-grained einkorn from 'Ais Yiorkis are compared to those from Aceramic and early Neolithic sites elsewhere in Cyprus, in northern Syria and central Europe. The grains appear to be larger than domestic grains of a later date from the Levantine mainland. Recent work by Purugganan and Fuller (Evolution 65:171-183, 2011) demonstrates a slow evolutionary rate in increasing grain size relative to the rates of evolution in wild species subject to natural selection. When the measurements of two-grained einkorn wheat from 'Ais Yiorkis are compared with these same allochronic data the results indicate an accelerated rate in attaining larger grain size on Cyprus than on the mainland. The possibility of a domestication 'event' or rapid fixation of larger grain size characteristic of domesticated cereal crops in the context of an initially small island population is suggested by the colonisation by farmers of Cyprus in the Cypro-Pre-Pottery Neolithic.
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