Old crops for new insights: agricultural systems of broomcorn and foxtail millet cultivation in Iberia

In the middle of the second millennium BC, the spread of two new Asian crops (broomcorn and foxtail millet) throughout Europe led to major socio-economic changes. However, despite its abundance in archaeological sites, we know very little about its cultivation techniques and uses.

Millets can be traced through multiple archaeological approaches (seeds, phytoliths, biomolecular markers) providing great potential for their investigation.

In order to understand their importance in agricultural systems this project aims to produce new evidence from modern and archaeological samples from western Europe.

To provide innovative perspectives, the project will focus on an interdisciplinary approach that combines ethnobotany, archaeobotany, stable isotopes and experimental agriculture to reconstruct cultivation techniques and environmental constraints.

Combining stable carbon and nitrogen isotope values with functional weed ecology – an approach pioneered at Oxford – will allow detailed reconstruction of growing conditions and production regimes.

The fellow will receive training in these techniques, which will enable comparison between present-day millet-growing systems and archaeobotanical assemblages from 24 sites in the Iberian peninsula.

Determining the agroecology of millet cultivation will provide a fresh perspective on current theories regarding their adoption in late prehistory and will contribute to major advances in the study of past and present-day farming systems.

The results will also articulate with work on climate change, food, genetic diversity and sustainability associated with traditional knowledge, placing this research at the forefront of the current scientific context of agrarian studies.