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      Risk, Reliability and Resilience: Phytolith Evidence for Alternative ‘Neolithization’ Pathways at Kharaneh IV in the Azraq Basin, Jordan

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          Abstract

          ‘Neolithization’ pathway refers to the development of adaptations that characterized subsequent Neolithic life, sedentary occupations, and agriculture. In the Levant, the origins of these human behaviors are widely argued to have emerged during the Early Epipaleolithic (ca. 23 ka cal BP). Consequently, there has been a pre-occupation with identifying and modeling the dietary shift to cereal and grains during this period, which is considered to have been a key development that facilitated increasing sedentism and, eventually, agriculture. Yet, direct evidence of plant use in the form of macrobotanical remains is extremely limited at Epipaleolithic sites and the expected ‘Neolithization’ pathway has not been robustly demonstrated. However, new direct microbotanical phytolith evidence from the large aggregation site of Kharaneh IV, in the Azraq Basin, suggests that increasingly settled occupation was not the result of wild grass and cereal use, but rather the result of a typical hunter-gatherer balance, based on the use of mostly reliable resources supplemented by some risky resources. Moreover, and illustrating this balance, the direct botanical evidence emphases the importance of the wetlands as an under-recognized reliable plant resource. Significantly, the use of these reliable wetland plant resources at Kharaneh IV represents an unexpected ‘Neolithization’ pathway.

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          International code for phytolith nomenclature 1.0.

          Phytoliths (microscopic opal silica particles produced in and between the cells of many plants) are a very resilient, often-preserved type of microfossil and today, phytolith analysis is widely used in palaeoenvironmental studies, botany, geology and archaeology. To date there has been little standardization in the way phytoliths are described and classified. This paper presents the first International Code for Phytolith Nomenclature (ICPN), proposing an easy to follow, internationally accepted protocol to describe and name phytoliths.
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            Processing of wild cereal grains in the Upper Palaeolithic revealed by starch grain analysis.

            Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) and wheat (Triticum monococcum L. and Triticum turgidum L.) were among the principal 'founder crops' of southwest Asian agriculture. Two issues that were central to the cultural transition from foraging to food production are poorly understood. They are the dates at which human groups began to routinely exploit wild varieties of wheat and barley, and when foragers first utilized technologies to pound and grind the hard, fibrous seeds of these and other plants to turn them into easily digestible foodstuffs. Here we report the earliest direct evidence for human processing of grass seeds, including barley and possibly wheat, in the form of starch grains recovered from a ground stone artefact from the Upper Palaeolithic site of Ohalo II in Israel. Associated evidence for an oven-like hearth was also found at this site, suggesting that dough made from grain flour was baked. Our data indicate that routine processing of a selected group of wild cereals, combined with effective methods of cooking ground seeds, were practiced at least 12,000 years before their domestication in southwest Asia.
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              Climate change, adaptive cycles, and the persistence of foraging economies during the late Pleistocene/Holocene transition in the Levant

              Climatic forcing during the Younger Dryas (∼12.9–11.5 ky B.P.) event has become the theoretical basis to explain the origins of agricultural lifestyles in the Levant by suggesting a failure of foraging societies to adjust. This explanation however, does not fit the scarcity of data for predomestication cultivation in the Natufian Period. The resilience of Younger Dryas foragers is better illustrated by a concept of adaptive cycles within a theory of adaptive change (resilience theory). Such cycles consist of four phases: release/collapse (Ω); reorganization (α), when the system restructures itself after a catastrophic stimulus through innovation and social memory—a period of greater resilience and less vulnerability; exploitation (r); and conservation (K), representing an increasingly rigid system that loses flexibility to change. The Kebarans and Late Natufians had similar responses to cold and dry conditions vs. Early Natufians and the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A responses to warm and wet climates. Kebarans and Late Natufians (α-phase) shifted to a broader-based diet and increased their mobility. Early Natufian and Pre-Pottery Neolithic A populations (r- and K-phases) had a growing investment in more narrowly focused, high-yield plant resources, but they maintained the broad range of hunted animals because of increased sedentism. These human adaptive cycles interlocked with plant and animal cycles. Forest and grassland vegetation responded to late Pleistocene and early Holocene climatic fluctuations, but prey animal cycles reflected the impact of human hunting pressure. The combination of these three adaptive cycles results in a model of human adaptation, showing potential for great sustainability of Levantine foraging systems even under adverse climatic conditions.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                19 October 2016
                2016
                : 11
                : 10
                : e0164081
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
                [2 ]Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, California, United States of America
                [3 ]Department of Anthropology, University of Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States of America
                [4 ]Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, United States of America
                New York State Museum, UNITED STATES
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                • Conceptualization: MNR.

                • Funding acquisition: MNR LAM.

                • Investigation: MNR LAM DM.

                • Resources: MNR AR.

                • Writing – original draft: MNR.

                • Writing – review & editing: LAM DM AR.

                ‡ MNR is senior author on this work.

                Article
                PONE-D-16-28653
                10.1371/journal.pone.0164081
                5070832
                27760164
                e71d8c55-22c2-4d45-bfbb-2f9aab3855de
                © 2016 Ramsey et al

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 18 July 2016
                : 19 September 2016
                Page count
                Figures: 10, Tables: 3, Pages: 26
                Funding
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000155, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada;
                Award ID: 752-2011-1728
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000155, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada;
                Award ID: 756-2015-0408
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000001, National Science Foundation;
                Award ID: BCS-1418462
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000267, Arts and Humanities Research Council;
                Award ID: AH/E009484/1
                Award Recipient :
                This research was supported by a Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Ph.D. fellowship [award number 752-2011-1728], a National Science Foundation SBE DDRIG [grant number BCS-1418462], and two Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL) travel grants (2011, 2012) awarded to M.N. Ramsey. This manuscript was written during the tenure of M.N. Ramsey’s Canadian SSHRC Post-doctoral Fellowship [award number 756-2015-0408]. The fieldwork was entirely funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) (AH/E009484/1).
                Categories
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