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ARWA – The International Association for Archaeological Research in Western & Central Asia has the pleasure to invite you to the following AAA online lecture of Bioarchaeology: Dr Carolyne Douché (School of Archaeology, University of Oxford) Assessing Plant Economy of Ancient Mesopotamia through Archaeobotany: New Results from Iraq Monday September 18, 2023 UK and Ireland (= GMT/UTC) Rome, Paris, Berlin (Central European Time = GMT 1) Iraq Join Zoom Meeting Link: Meeting ID: 347 945 0587 Passcode: 4W59Ff Abstract Agriculture is considered as the main driver for the development of mesopotamian societies, allowing for the emergence of villages followed by the rise of cities. However, most of our current knowledge on plant production and consumption derives from the iconography and cuneiform tablets recovered on several sites, from the Early Bronze Age onwards. During the excavations carried out before 1990s in Iraq, original data, i.e archaeobotanical remains, were rarely collected or only when visible by eyes. Fieldworks in this area stopped due to the successive wars and simultaneously, environmental research and methods (including archaeobotany) developed in adjacent areas. As a consequence, we are now facing an uneven archaeobotanical documentation within Mesopotamia : Syria and Anatolia having been much more investigated. Fortunately, most of the new excavations carried out in both, northern and southern Iraq, include archaeobotanical studies, allowing us to assess the plant economy. This paper will present the archaeobotanical results obtained in the framework of the GRAMADIF project, carried out on several archaeological sites in Iraq. The wide time-scale − from the Late Neolithic to the Iron Age − and the distribution of the sites into different eco-regions allow for comparisons. The samples, collected in various archaeological contexts, offer the opportunity to analyse the multiplicity of relations between plants and societies. Temporal and regional differences are observed and possible explanations (climate changes, cultural transformations) will be discussed.
