Setting the morphologic quality limits enabling accurate classification of charred archaeological grape seeds.

This study investigates the morphological changes in grape pips resulting from various charring conditions. Employing high-resolution scanning combined with morphometric measurements for morphological analysis, we aimed to understand the effects of charring on grape pips. Our morphometric analysis demonstrated significant alterations in seed shape above 250 °C.

Plant-related Philistine ritual practices at biblical Gath.

The Philistine culture (Iron Age, ca. 1200-604 BCE) profoundly impacted the southern Levant's cultural history, agronomy, and dietary customs. Nevertheless, our knowledge of the Philistines' cultic praxis and deities, is limited and uncertain.

Unprecedented yet gradual nature of first millennium CE intercontinental crop plant dispersal revealed in ancient Negev desert refuse.

Global agro-biodiversity has resulted from processes of plant migration and agricultural adoption. Although critically affecting current diversity, crop diffusion from Classical antiquity to the Middle Ages is poorly researched, overshadowed by studies on that of prehistoric periods. A new archaeobotanical dataset from three Negev Highland desert sites demonstrates the first millennium CE's significance for long-term agricultural change in Southwest Asia.

Ancient DNA from a lost Negev Highlands desert grape reveals a Late Antiquity wine lineage.

Recent excavations of Late Antiquity settlements in the Negev Highlands of southern Israel uncovered a society that established commercial-scale viticulture in an arid environment [D. Fuks , , 19780-19791 (2020)]. We applied target-enriched genome-wide sequencing and radiocarbon dating to examine grapevine pips that were excavated at three of these sites.

Dual domestications and origin of traits in grapevine evolution.

We elucidate grapevine evolution and domestication histories with 3525 cultivated and wild accessions worldwide. In the Pleistocene, harsh climate drove the separation of wild grape ecotypes caused by continuous habitat fragmentation. Then, domestication occurred concurrently about 11,000 years ago in Western Asia and the Caucasus to yield table and wine grapevines.

Six-rowed wild-growing barleys are hybrids of diverse origins.

Crop-wild gene flow is common when domesticated plants and their wild relatives grow close to each other. The resultant hybrid forms appear as semi-domesticates and were sometimes considered as missing links between crops and their wild progenitors. Wild-growing barleys in Central and Eastern Asia, named Hordeum agriocrithon, show hallmark characters of both wild and domesticated forms.

Accurate classification of fresh and charred grape seeds to the varietal level, using machine learning based classification method.

Grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) currently includes thousands of cultivars. Discrimination between these varieties, historically done by ampelography, is done in recent decades mostly by genetic analysis.

The rise and fall of viticulture in the Late Antique Negev Highlands reconstructed from archaeobotanical and ceramic data.

The international scope of the Mediterranean wine trade in Late Antiquity raises important questions concerning sustainability in an ancient international economy and offers a valuable historical precedent to modern globalization. Such questions involve the role of intercontinental commerce in maintaining sustainable production within important supply regions and the vulnerability of peripheral regions believed to have been especially sensitive to environmental and political disturbances. We provide archaeobotanical evidence from trash mounds at three sites in the central Negev Desert, Israel, unraveling the rise and fall of viticulture over the second to eighth centuries of the common era (CE).

Ancient trash mounds unravel urban collapse a century before the end of Byzantine hegemony in the southern Levant.

The historic event of the Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA) was recently identified in dozens of natural and geological climate proxies of the northern hemisphere. Although this climatic downturn was proposed as a major cause for pandemic and extensive societal upheavals in the sixth-seventh centuries CE, archaeological evidence for the magnitude of societal response to this event is sparse. This study uses ancient trash mounds as a type of proxy for identifying societal crisis in the urban domain, and employs multidisciplinary investigations to establish the terminal date of organized trash collection and high-level municipal functioning on a city-wide scale.

Development of a 3D seed morphological tool for grapevine variety identification, and its comparison with SSR analysis.

Grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) is one of the classical fruits of the Old World. Among the thousands of domesticated grapevine varieties and variable wild sylvestris populations, the range of variation in pip morphology is very wide.

Collection and characterization of grapevine genetic resources (Vitis vinifera) in the Holy Land, towards the renewal of ancient winemaking practices.

The importance and extent of wine consumption in all life aspects at the Holy Land is well documented. The Muslim influence in this region led to the abandonment of winemaking practices, and possible loss of indigenous wine varieties. Here we present a country wide collection of the local grapevine population including wild and cultivated forms, and its characterization by genetic, ampelographic and enological methods.

Composite Sickles and Cereal Harvesting Methods at 23,000-Years-Old Ohalo II, Israel.

Use-wear analysis of five glossed flint blades found at Ohalo II, a 23,000-years-old fisher-hunter-gatherers' camp on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, Northern Israel, provides the earliest evidence for the use of composite cereal harvesting tools. The wear traces indicate that tools were used for harvesting near-ripe semi-green wild cereals, shortly before grains are ripe and disperse naturally. The studied tools were not used intensively, and they reflect two harvesting modes: flint knives held by hand and inserts hafted in a handle.

Genomic analysis of 6,000-year-old cultivated grain illuminates the domestication history of barley.

The cereal grass barley was domesticated about 10,000 years before the present in the Fertile Crescent and became a founder crop of Neolithic agriculture. Here we report the genome sequences of five 6,000-year-old barley grains excavated at a cave in the Judean Desert close to the Dead Sea. Comparison to whole-exome sequence data from a diversity panel of present-day barley accessions showed the close affinity of ancient samples to extant landraces from the Southern Levant and Egypt, consistent with a proposed origin of domesticated barley in the Upper Jordan Valley.

Studying Ancient Anthropogenic Impacts on Current Floral Biodiversity in the Southern Levant as reflected by the Philistine Migration.

Human migrations across geographic boundaries can facilitate the introduction of new husbandry practices and dispersal of plants and animals, resulting in changes in biodiversity. As previously demonstrated, the 12th century BCE Philistine migration-to the southern Levantine littoral, involved the transportation of pigs from Europe, engendering long term genetic displacement of local Near Eastern haplotypes. Building on this, and combining biogeographical methods of Floral List comparisons with archaeological data, we have elucidated the Philistine impact on Southern Levantine floral ecosystems.

The Origin of Cultivation and Proto-Weeds, Long Before Neolithic Farming.

Weeds are currently present in a wide range of ecosystems worldwide. Although the beginning of their evolution is largely unknown, researchers assumed that they developed in tandem with cultivation since the appearance of agricultural habitats some 12,000 years ago. These rapidly-evolving plants invaded the human disturbed areas and thrived in the new habitat.

Extinction of water plants in the Hula Valley: Evidence for climate change.

We describe two events of water plant extinction in the Hula Valley, northern Israel: the ancient, natural extinction of 3 out of 14 extinct species at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, which occurred some 800-700 k.yr., and an anthropogenic, near contemporary extinction of seven species in the artificial drainage of the Hula Lake in the 1950s.

The broad spectrum revisited: evidence from plant remains.

The beginning of agriculture is one of the most important developments in human history, with enormous consequences that paved the way for settled life and complex society. Much of the research on the origins of agriculture over the last 40 years has been guided by Flannery's [Flannery, K. V.

Stone Age hut in Israel yields world's oldest evidence of bedding.

The earliest archaeological remains of dwelling huts built by Homo sapiens were found in various European Upper Paleolithic open-air camps. Although floors of huts were found in a small number of cases, modern organization of the home space that includes defined resting areas and bedding remains was not discovered. We report here the earliest in situ bedding exposed on a brush hut floor.

Impetus for sowing and the beginning of agriculture: ground collecting of wild cereals.

The Agricultural Revolution in Western Asia, which took place some 11,000 years ago, was a turning point in human history [Childe, V. G. (1952) New Light on the Most Ancient East (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London)].