Abstract
The origins of bread have long been associated with the emergence of agriculture and cereal domestication during the Neolithic in southwest Asia. In this study we analyze a total of 24 charred food remains from Shubayqa 1, a Natufian hunter-gatherer site located in northeastern Jordan and dated to 14.6–11.6 ka cal BP. Our finds provide empirical data to demonstrate that the preparation and consumption of bread-like products predated the emergence of agriculture by at least 4,000 years. The interdisciplinary analyses indicate the use of some of the “founder crops” of southwest Asian agriculture (e.g., Triticum boeoticum, wild einkorn) and root foods (e.g., Bolboschoenus glaucus, club-rush tubers) to produce flat bread-like products. The available archaeobotanical evidence for the Natufian period indicates that cereal exploitation was not common during this time, and it is most likely that cereal-based meals like bread become staples only when agriculture was firmly established.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 7925-7930 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |
| Volume | 115 |
| Issue number | 31 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 31 Jul 2018 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. We thank Dr. Andreas Heiss (Austrian Academy of Sciences) for useful comments during the analyses of the food remains from Shubayqa 1, Joe Roe (University of Copenhagen) for the illustration of the map (Fig. 1), three anonymous reviewers that commented on the text, and the Laboratory of Paleoethnobotany Lydia Zapata at UPV-EHU for allowing us to use its installations. The Shubayqa project was funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (Sapere Aude Starting Grant DFF 4001-00068 and Postdoctoral Grant 11-116136 to T.R.), Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship H2020-MSCA-IF-2016 (H-E Interactions Grant 743544; to M.N.R.), H. P. Hjerl Mindefondet for Dansk Palæstinaforskning, and the Danish Institute in Damascus. Permission to excavate at Shubayqa 1 and export some of the remains for analysis was granted by the Department of Antiquities of Jordan. The archaeobotanical samples are currently archived at the University of Copenhagen. The raw data are presented in SI Appendix.
Funding Information:
We thank Dr. Andreas Heiss (Austrian Academy of Sciences) for useful comments during the analyses of the food remains from Shubayqa 1, Joe Roe (University of Copenhagen) for the illustration of the map (Fig. 1), three anonymous reviewers that commented on the text, and the Laboratory of Paleoethnobotany Lydia Zapata at UPV-EHU for allowing us to use its installations. The Shubayqa project was funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (Sapere Aude Starting Grant DFF 4001-00068 and Postdoctoral Grant 11-116136 to T.R.), Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship H2020-MSCA-IF-2016 (H-E Interactions Grant 743544; to M.N.R.), H. P. Hjerl Mindefondet for Dansk Palæstinaforskning, and the Danish Institute in Damascus. Permission to excavate at Shubayqa 1 and export some of the remains for analysis was granted by the Department of Antiquities of Jordan. The archaeobotanical samples are currently archived at the University of Copenhagen. The raw data are presented in SI Appendix.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
Keywords
- Archaeobotany
- Epipaleolithic
- Food
- Hunter-gatherer
- Southwest Asia